fitz vacker's bottled up rage

1// The Collective: Council Copycats? 

"Everyone, I'd like you to meet Squall, Blur, Wraith, and Granite," Mr. Forkle told them. [Neverseen, Ch.9]

From this quote and on, Shannon starts playing the most hardcore Spot The Difference game between the Collective and the Council... and that really shouldn't have been the case. 

So here are their most suspicious similarities.

1. They're all elves

Which makes sense for the Council since they’re the rulers of the elves—albeit the more the series progress, the more the Councillors state verbatim that they’re rulers of the entire planet.

But with the Black Swan, the Collective all being elves... yeah, I really have to question the logic and ethics of that. 

The Black Swan are supposed to be this multispeciesal organisation that cares about inclusion and diversity, as shown by quotes such as this one:

“[...] The dwarven king brought me here when I revealed the existence of our organization. He thought it would be the perfect place for us to make a fresh start.” “So King Enki is on our side?” Della asked. “He’s not against the Council, if that’s what you’re wondering. But he has felt for some time that the Councillors’ methods are not working. Many dwarves have offered their assistance—though at the moment most have returned to their cities. [...]” [Neverseen, Ch.7]

They believe that interspecies cooperation is vital to the betterment of the world—*cough* unless the species are “hostile” like the ogres or trolls or humans in which case they are useless and we shouldn’t try recruiting them *cough*

Project Moonlark is literally framed as being a multispeciesal initiative: 

For some reason she'd imagined the project only included Mr. Forkle, sitting alone in a lab with a microscope and some Petri dishes. But now she could picture a whole team---multiple people and species brainstorming and planning, resting their hopes on her to be their Moonlark. [Neverseen, Ch.13]

“Multiple species” but only one (1) of them is allowed to have any sort of leadership… and it’s conveniently the species that has repeatedly imposed their dominance in every other field and institution. Great. That's fair.

And you know what, I could have forgiven the Collective only having elvin member but why the FUCK is Calla and the gnomes and the dwarves NOT counted as Black Swan members at all? None of them are mentioned to have a Black Swan pendant which is supposed to show their belonging to the organisation. 

Worse, Calla and the gnomes (and the dwarves too, if Shannon cared enough to give them any lines of dialogue) consistently exclude themselves from the Black Swan as if they are not proper members of the group which drives me INSANE: 

"That's one of the Black Swan's mysteries. But you are their heir. Your spot is reserved. [...]" [Neverseen, Ch.12]

"Lur and Mitya have served the Black Swan nearly as long as I have," Calla explained. [Neverseen, Ch.16]

The second quote is killing me because this kind of language (“served the Black Swan”) is exclusively used by gnomes and dwarves, meanwhile every elvin member is said to be “part of” the Black Swan. 

There are so many examples in Neverseen alone of the elves being described as “with” or “part of” the Black Swan, whereas I couldn’t find you one example of this kind of language used for a gnome or dwarf to save my life:  

"Of course I did! I couldn't exactly say, 'I'm with the Black Swan and this was part of our plan!' This is what I mean, Miss Foster. [...]" [Neverseen, Ch.32]

"It's weird," Biana admitted. "Are you part of the Black Swan?" [Neverseen, Ch.38]

Even Timkin—whose sole mission so far can be described as “forest guide”—was worthy of language that framed him as on equal ground with the Black Swan (even though he very much isn't): 

"I hope that means you're part of the Black Swan," Sophie said. [Neverseen, Ch.26]

"If you hate the Black Swan so much, why are you one of them?" Sophie asked. [Neverseen, Ch.63]

Meanwhile, Calla, who worked on the Black Swan's biggest (and only) project, doesn’t get a pendant or a seat at the big guy’s table or a code name or ANYTHING? 

Calla smiled her green-toothed smile. "I know this might be hard to believe, but I've been part of Project Moonlark since the beginning." [Neverseen, Ch.11]

What would be hard to believe? That a gnome participated in such project? Like. What.

Seriously. This is just Racism™ because please explain to me what makes Squall or Della or Timkin worthier to be called “Black Swan members” than Calla? Nothing, right. She deserves a spot in the Collective more than every Collective member besides maybe Forkle. 

I know I am way too pressed about the treatment of a fictional race of people but genuinely the way the gnomes (and dwarves) are treated as mere numbers yet ironically never seem to count makes my blood boil. But this isn’t the Gnomes and the Plague Rant Part II this is the Black Swan rant. 

2. They all have an ability (none of which are stigmatised)

We all know the elves’ bad habit of discriminating based on abilities sucks, and the Councillors all having an ability makes complete sense. 

Again, it’s the Collective being a perfect copy of the Council that is bonkers to me. Because they’re supposed to be above abilities discrimination. Because their group is supposed to be against stereotypes and ability supremacy.

Except the more you learn about the Black Swan, the more you doubt these claims.

Here is the ability composition of the Council: two Telepaths (counting Kenric), as well as an Empath, an Inflictor, a Descryer, a Vanisher, a Phaser, a Polyglot-Flasher, a Conjurer, a Vociferator, a Charger, a Guster, and a Beguiler. 

Now, here is the ability composition of the Council’s dickriders Collective: two Telepaths (technically three), as well as a Froster, a Phaser and a Vanisher. 

I mean there is a reason why so many people think one of the Collective members could be a Councillor. The abilities overlap almost entirely.

And not only do every member of the Collective have an ability, but none of these abilities are stigmatised. Telepaths are literally the crème de la crème of the elvin world and have been shown to get preferential treatment every fucking time. They have more job opportunities related to their ability than every other elf. They are the most privileged group of elves—argue with the wall. 

Why does the Collective not have a Shade, Psionipath, or Pyrokinetic? And most jarringly, why are there no Talentless people in the Collective? 

Actually, if it weren’t for Timkin the Diversity Hire, I could have argued that the Neverseen are far more “punk” than the Black Swan because at least they include Pyrokinetics, Shades and Psionipaths in their ranks—and even grant them leadership. The Black Swan is just a mini-Council and that's not playing in their favour.

To me the quickest way Shannon could have given the Black Swan the "moral high ground" was if the Black Swan employed more Talentless people (and gave them actually important roles, not “babysitter”).

The best example was making Timkin part of the Collective/Project Moonlark. Or make Livvy Talentless. We don’t know about Livvy’s ability but I swear it would have been mentioned if she didn’t have one by now, so I’m going to count her as Not-Talentless. 

If abilities truly don’t matter (even though your main project relies on giving 5 different abilities to one elf) then we shouldn’t be sitting here asking what do the Collective members have over Talentless people… other than their abilities. 

3. The members all (allegedly) have equal power and the same duties

This is probably the one thing that doesn’t make sense for the Council either. When you have a ruling body of 12 people, the best decision you could make is distribute power and duties. It's called specialisation.

Emery, Oralie, Bronte, Terik and Kenric are the only Councillors with specialised roles, and those roles hardly count as 'duties'.

Emery is the designated spokesperson, Oralie is the human lie detector, Kenric is the Washer, Bronte is the old guy (I can’t believe that’s an actual thing but Keeper did introduce seniority—i.e. agism—and went nowhere with it) and Terik can read people’s “potential” but prefers not to because [insert bullshit excuse here]. 

Those aren't duties.

When I’m talking about duties, I mean responsibilities like treasurer or scribe or diplomat or recruiter. Those kinds of things. Specialised knowledge and skillsets that makes Councillors not as interchangeable.

Just imagine for a minute that each Councillor had their own domain where they are the best expert in their field? One Councillor could be more knowledgeable in Health, another in Education, and another in Entertainment, etc.

Instead we just have 12 people who always show up as a pack in every room and do the same things and talk over each other without anyone bringing anything unique to the table. Delete half of the Council and nothing changes. But that’s a rant for another time.

The Collective has the same issue and it’s even worse with them because why. Would you not. Have competent people lead?

Wraith, Squall, Blur and Granite are completely useless—so useless in fact that they get mogged by their subordinates: 

→ Livvy is a skilled physician

→ Cadence is a skilled microbiologist and diplomat as well as the second most talented Polyglot in the world

→ Calla is an expert in plant pollination 

→ Timkin has mastered all his skills from his time in Exilium 

→ Prentice is a Keeper (though I still think those are useless) 

→ Jolie was their first double-agent and successfully infiltrated the Neverseen 

→ Tinker is Tinker

Meanwhile Squall has no skill in alchemy despite being married to the best alchemist in the world (misogyny womp womp), Granite has no specific role as a Telepath (which sounds insane to me because he’s the only Telepath that doesn’t excel at anything, I guess coaches truly don’t play, huh), Blur is… what does this guy even do, and Wraith has mastered the (totally useless) art of partially vanishing, good for him. 

Who put these four donkeys in charge, seriously. 

4. Both groups debate telepathically and have a Telepath as their spokesperson

The Collective turned to each other and Sophie was sure they were debating the matter telepathically. The Council used the same trick, so no one could hear them argue. [Neverseen, Ch. 9]

This point will come up multiple times because the Black Swan having telepathic debates infuriates me to no end. It kind of embodies everything wrong with Neverseen’s writing as a whole, which might be why I fixate on it so much. Easier to lash out on specific details than explain why a whole ass book bothers me. 

At least the Council’s telepathic debates made sense? It’s Propaganda 101. They want to preserve a united front. They want to seem like one elf, that's why they dress the same with silver coats and circlets (and not because Shannon could never describe 12 outfits at once) and have a designated spokesperson. It's part of the propaganda that the Councillors all get along and work together super duper well (and not because Shannon was feeling too lazy to flesh them out as individuals.) 

Except the Black Swan's Collective shouldn't care about such things. They shouldn't be afraid to show that they don't always agree. At least, that's what an organisation that prides itself in not wanting to repeat the Council's mistake would do.

But I'm not entirely sure of what organisation Sophie joined, to be honest:

"And make the Council's mistake?" Mr. Forkle asked. "No, I think not. [...]" [Neverseen, Ch. 27]

Not only that, but it makes it so that the Collective requires a Telepath, and requires the Telepath to be the spokesperson, exactly like the Council. Which isn’t that many nickels, but it’s weird that it happened twice.

In fact, I would've liked it better had Mr. Forkle NOT been part of the Collective. Just because you preside over a specific project doesn't mean you should preside over the entire organisation.

Mr. Forkle's skills are (as far as we know) in disguises, surveillance and genetics. None of these make him a good leader. It also gives him far too much power compared to the others.

5. Both groups exploit gnomes, dwarves and children

Elvin superiority strikes again. I think the gnomes and dwarves being said to work for the Black Swan but not being given any membership pendant (implying they were not told to swear fealty like regular members) is telling enough, but I just want to add that the Black Swan is being completely careless with the lives of the gnomes and dwarves they employ.

First of all, the Black Swan uses the dwarves/gnomes’ refuge (Alluveterre) as a fucking hideout (I know it was built for this purpose but I think there is a case to be made about how the gnomes seem to use it as their main home whereas the elves use it as a dispensable hideout), which of course was conveniently deserted by the end of Neverseen lest Shannon’s Golden Boy Keefe has to face any consequences for jeopardising Alluveterre in Lodestar. 

And whilst adult Black Swan members (minus Della and Cadence) are allowed codenames and disguises, this courtesy is not extended to the gnomes, dwarves and children members, who have to openly out themselves as rebels while the leaders are safe and sound behind their ridiculous aliases. If this isn’t convincing enough of how cowardly the Black Swan’s Collective is, I don’t know what is. 

Yegor, Kun, Irja, Ermete, Calla, Amisi, Kloris, Nesrin, Vered, Brier, Della, Sophie, Biana, Tam, Linh, Keefe, Fitz, Dex, Stina, Maruca, Marella and Wylie all showed up to Black Swan missions with their faces exposed and their names shouted carelessly for the enemy’s ears to retain. 

I'm convinced that more than half of these teenagers wouldn’t toss and turn in their beds at night worrying about retaliation and whatnot if the Black Swan hadn’t been so negligent about their anonymity and safety. 

I mean, do we see Blur worrying about being personally targeted? Does Wraith? Squall? Physic? Tinker? Coiffe? FORKLE?

As for the gnomes and dwarves, well… all the named dwarves are dead anyway and I’m sure the gnomes all look the same for the elves and Shannon, so there are no reasons to worry about them being targets of the Neverseen or Council, hahahaha! They just stop existing once they’re done being useful to the elves. They’re instruments. Means to an end. Nothing more.

6. Both groups show disdain/prejudice towards Pyrokinetics, Waywards, Shades, humans and Talentless people that are not Kesler Dizznee

We all know the Councillors are huge bigots especially against humans as reflected by their policies surrounding them, so there’s no need for me to pull out the receipts. The Collective, on the other hand… 

“I know,” Mr. Forkle told her. “Sophie’s mother lost five babies before she sought my help. And while I was working at the clinic I met hundreds of women like her. The most heartbreaking part was that I could’ve fixed them all with a few elixirs—much like I did with your mother. She had no trouble having your sister after you, right?” Sophie nodded. “So why didn’t you help them?” “Because humans lost the right to our assistance when they violated our treaty and prepared for war. We even tried to help them secretly afterward. But they took the gifts we gave them and twisted them into weapons, or bargaining chis for their political agendas, or soggy, chemical-filled Twinkies. So I understand why we had to stop. But it was hard to watch.” [Neverseen, Ch.40] 

This is probably the most egregious example because the audacity to announce so calmly that you let HUNDREDS OF WOMEN miscarry just because they “lost the right to [elves’] assistance.” You’re bringing up fucking Twinkies as one of the reasons why withdrawing help from innocent women was justified. Are we deadass right now sir. 

We are leaving Neverseen territory because I just had to bring up how this directly parallels Livvy’s sob story in Nightfall: 

“It was horrifying,” Livvy agreed. “Needles and blood and beeping machines leaking radiation. I even saw someone die.” She wiped her eyes. “And the worst part was, I could’ve saved him with one elixir. In fact, I could’ve cured the whole hospital in a few hours. But I didn’t have any medicine with me because I hadn’t gone there to give. I’d gone there to take. I thought I couldn’t be any more disgusted with myself. But as I was trying to leave, I stumbled into the children’s wing, and . . . I’ll spare you the nightmares.” [Nightfall, Ch.13]

Except the key difference between evil Forkman and a decent-enough person is that Livvy specifically states that she could have helped if she had medicine on her. Her visit was spontaneous, and she at the time was oblivious to the humans’ medical problems. She didn’t know she could have saved lives that day.

Meanwhile, Forkle worked in a clinic for God knows how long and had not one but “hundreds” of opportunities to help his patients yet repeatedly decided not to break the unjust, arbitrary laws set by the Council centuries earlier because… nothing. He had no good excuse.

I just know there was a way he could have helped prevent these deeply traumatic miscarriages without causing “chaos” or whatever. He just didn’t want to because you cannot convince me that Forkle gives a flying fuck about humans.

Which is an insane statement to make about the man who designed an entire project around building a super-elf who could help humans and elves coexist again. (Except if you think about it, the Black Swan could have done way more for the humans in the 13+ years it took to get Project Moonlark to this stage than Sophie—seeing from her current trajectory—ever will.) 

Then you have, again, the fact that the Black Swan doesn’t have any Shades or Pyrokinetics until Sophie and friends' arrival. They also admit—again, in Nightfall, not Neverseen—that they did everything in their power so that Sophie never triggers Pyrokinesy as an ability. 

For a series that argues that “abilities aren’t everything”, the “good guys” sure are obsessed with abilities. Say what you will about the Neverseens, but they’re not Pyrophobic. Which is why they keep winning 👍

The following quotes show two missed opportunities in Neverseen for the teenagers (specifically Sophie's)Pyrophobia to be called out: 

"Do they have any Pyrokinetics?" Biana asked. "I hope not," Sophie said. [Neverseen, Ch.4]

"Is there a Pyrokinetic here?" Sophie asked. "Two," Granite said. Sophie hoped her path to Prentice kept her far away. [Neverseen, Ch.28]

In my opinion, Pyrokinesy is the most mistreated ability in the series both by the characters and the overall framing of the narrative, which completely contradicts the message of the story.

Are we supposed to judge people based on things they have absolutely zero control over, yes or no? Well, according to Auntie Shannon, we shouldn’t judge people ever… unless they’re Pyrokinetics, in which case, go right ahead. These people are all evil except for super snowflake special Marella who is the only good one. “I’m not Pyrophobic because I know a Pyrokinetic” ahhh Black Swan. 

And when you think it’s over, the evil Forkman—spokesperson of the Collective and most powerful leader of the Black Swan to the point that he’s the one vouching for them in the Peace Summit and all that—somehow finds a way to get worse. Because this is how he speaks about the Waywards (i.e. children between the ages 11-19): 

"Exilium is not so much a school as it is an institution," Mr. Forkle warned. "It exists for the Unworthy—the hopeless cases that must be kept in line. [...]" [Neverseen, Ch.39]

First of all, he’s one of the 4 people in this book who uses the U-word. The other 3 being Councillor Alina (the Collective = the Council pipeline just keeps getting deeper), Della Vacker and Coach Rohanna.

All 3 of these women have a background that explains why they would say such dehumanising things about the Waywards. For Alina and Rohanna, it’s literally part of their job to see the Waywards as less-than in order to enforce the inhumane policies on them. As for Della… she’s a Vacker. Of course she’s anti-Wayward-pilled. She’s a noble. She’s a Council dickrider.

You know who doesn’t have any business being so dehumanising of Waywards? The fucking Black Swan. Who are supposed to be this fucking rebellion group fighting for fucking equality. Equality for whom you may ask, because at this point I think we have no better upholder of the status quo than these poorly dressed dinguses. 

And last but not least, you cannot convince me that Black Swan cares about Talentless people. Yes, I argued previously that Timkin is treated better than the gnomes and dwarves, but that’s just because the gnomes and dwarves are treated as if they didn’t exist and Timkin’s existence is acknowledged… bare ass minimum. 

Timkin is their only Talentless recruit and they gave him no decision-making power, no opportunities to give his input (Timkin complains about child endangerment and not briefing the kids about the Exile plan before they’re in Exile, both of which are INCREDIBLY VALID CONCERNS):

"And last time you had permission to be there," Coiffe reminded her. "Do you really think you can walk in the main entrance?" "No. But it's hard to know what's going on when no one's told us the plan," she snapped. "That was not my decision." [Neverseen, Ch.26]

He also is given only one (1) mission: to guide the kids from Alluveterre to a random forest and leave them to wait for the actual mission to begin. A mission which he understandably hates and finds pointless:

"My involvement with the Black Swan is usually more hands off. But today I must play babysitter, [...]" [Neverseen, Ch.26]

You compare it to Cassius—whose sole presence in this organisation shows that the Black Swan doesn’t give a flying fuck about making Keefe feel safe and welcome—and suddenly you can see that the Black Swan has a serious problem with Talentless people.

Because Cassius is given multiple missions throughout the series, including a mission in Stellarlune that anyone else could have taken and that did not require any of his skills, much less his ability. Which was to monitor the treaty negotiations with the trolls. Which I have no idea how Cassius would even have access to but that’s a Stellarlune rant so… we’ll leave it at that.

Kesler Dizznee is actually the only Talentless person that the Black Swan mentions aside from Timkin. It’s not like Talentless characters are roaming the streets of this series anyways but if there was any group that should have had more Talentless members, it was the Black Swan.

Aaaaaaand… we’re going to stop there. 

Look, there’s nothing inherently wrong with the Collective being eerily similar to the Council. Honestly, it could have been a fascinating concept to explore, to show that the holier-than-thou attitude of the Collective is actually pure bullfuckery and Sophie could’ve called them out on that (similarly to how Snow and Coin are the same breed of evil in Mockingjay).

My gripe with Shannon just hitting copy and paste when creating the Collective is that she isn’t being deliberate about it. All these parallels between the Collective and Council are purely coincidental. They exist because Shannon was being unbelievably lazy when creating the Black Swan. 

She never tries to add any nuance to her “politics”, to make Sophie just as ashamed of Forkle as Keefe is ashamed of Gisela or Fitz is (allegedly) ashamed of the Vacker Legacy. Because she only cares about the aesthetic of a political fantasy, trying to recreate the lightning of The Hunger Games without actually committing to any sort of political ideology. 

And before the  “it’s not that deep” or “it’s just a middle grade series” crowd comes for me, I just want to make it clear that I’m not asking Shannon to write politics in her books. No one was asking her to leave the power fantasy for young girls with sparkly castles and flying unicorns—and no one was asking her to write social commentary about a dystopic utopia. She did this to herself. 

The moment Sophie and friends were ‘conscripted’ into a rebel group was the moment KotLC swapped genres, and the moment our expectations were allowed to shift from a simple, wish-fulfillment middle grade to a political middle grade. 

And since Shannon wanted to pretend that she was going somewhere “deep” with Neverseen, then it’s totally fair of me to expect her to go beyond surface-level disguises and codenames and secrets. And it's totally fair criticism of me to be upset that the political fantasy is refusing to be political about anything.

And you know what Shannon. If you’re not going to play with the political themes in your story, then PASS THE GODDAMN CONTROLLER (to Suzanne Collins). AND SHUT UP.

Yeah I’m pissed. I despise cardboard politics.

2// World’s Sorriest Bunch of Nobodies

Another issue with the telepathic debate in Chapter 9 is that it robbed the Collective members of a much needed first impression. Because, from their introduction scene? Yeah, you cannot consider Blur, Wraith or Squall or even Granite to be actual characters. And they still aren’t, to be completely honest. 

"We believe you," Mr. Forkle eventually said. "And are willing to give this arrangement a try. You can swear fealty tonight with the others." [Neverseen, Ch. 9]

Squeezing an entire debate in the word “eventually” implies the characters who participated in this debate had no opinions and arguments that mattered enough to be mentioned to the readers.

And let’s just exercise our right to critical thinking for two seconds: what, exactly, does it signal to your readers if you say that your new characters’ opinions don’t matter? Damn right: that the characters themselves don’t matter. 

At this point I’m going to ask, why have a Collective at all? Was it absolutely necessary for Wraith, Blur and Squall to be a part of it? Couldn’t you have done without Granite and Forkle? The Collective better not have been just to add secret identities and cheap mysteries, or I swear—

For further proof of “the Collective members hardly count as characters”, I once went looking for how many times each (confirmed) member of the Black Swan gets mentioned in Neverseen: 

→ Sophie/Moonlark: 1,855 mentions 

→ Keefe: 823 mentions 

→ Fitz: 577 mentions 

→ Forkle/Leto/Astin: 572 mentions

→ Dex: 394 mentions 

→ Biana: 362 mentions 

→ Della: 189 mentions 

→ Granite/Tiergan: 158 mentions

→ Prentice: 96 mentions 

→ Coiffe/Timkin: 46 mentions 

→ Blur: 39 mentions  

→ Physic: 37 mentions 

→ Squall/Juline: 23 mentions 

→ Wraith: 20 mentions 

→ Jolie: 12 mentions 

→ The Black Swan’s Technopath (Tinker): 1 mention

(I’m not counting Cadence, Tam and Linh who were not part of the Black Swan in that book). 

Forkle is the 4th most mentioned character in Neverseen, after Sophie, Keefe, and Fitz (the latter with only 5 more mentions than Forkle, which is insane work). 

If we went by mentions alone, Forkle deserved to be on Neverseen’s cover far more than Biana. (Technically so did Fitz but shhh). Let that sink in. 

Meanwhile, Squall and Wraith are amongst the least mentioned characters, only beating gnomes like Sior or Amisi by a very small margin.

In fact, Ruy—who only appears in ONE scene—gets more mentions than half of the Collective. And the Boobrie dude gets almost as many mentions as Wraith (15). Alden, who’s not even there for 99% of the book, gets mentioned a striking 91 times—so more than Blur, Squall and Wraith combined. Calla, who is refused a rightful place in the Collective and a Black Swan pendant, is mentioned 317 times.

To me, it’s astounding how little Shannon seems to care about the Collective, which further shows she didn’t put much thought into her politics at all. Even though she’s trying so, so hard to make you believe that she did. 

I mean those guys are rebels for fuck’s sake. They can’t be blank characters that are reduced to silly names and disguises, they NEED proper motives and opinions. Otherwise you’re just needlessly oversaturating your book with inconsequential characters.

Clearly, Squall, Wraith and Blur were mere afterthoughts, when characters like Timkin and Livvy easily sweep in and steal the stage. Honestly, they deserved to be part of the Collective far more than the nobodies with useless disguises who won’t be missed. I mean this is what she wrote as the Collective’s FIRST LINES: 

(Squall) "I know the titles might seem strange, but we've found it's easier to remember code names when they match the disguise." (Wraith) "Welcome to Alluveterre." (Granite) "We're grateful to have all of you here—including you, Ms. Vacker." (Blur) "The Neverseen are not a pressing threat at the moment."

What the hell does this say about their characters exactly?

Squall is used as an exposition machine—which is a terrible way to introduce your character, by the way, unless what they’re exposing is obviously biased and wrong. 

Wraith says “Welcome to Alluveterre” as if these kids haven’t been there for at least two to three hours already. Keep up.

Granite is “grateful” that the universe brought him five new kids to exploit. And he talks just like Forkle. Seriously, what’s with the “Ms. Vacker”?? #NotMyTiergan

Blur is an idiot who thinks the Neverseen are “not a pressing threat” even though they very much were. Honestly, his first line reveals more about his character than the others. Still sucks though. 

Imagine for a second that the Collective didn’t have telepathic debates.

Imagine if we’d seen each of the members’ differing stances on Della.

Imagine if those stances were windows to how they contribute to most debates in the future. Yes, it would’ve required to give them more page time and slow down the pacing, but even a tiny bit of characterisation could’ve done wonders to the story and paid off later on: 

– Squall could’ve been the pragmatic one, weighing the perks and losses of having Della join the order. 

– Wraith could’ve been more pessimistic, expecting Della to be a burden to the Black Swan, to not have what it takes to join a rebellion. 

– Meanwhile Blur could’ve headbutted with Wraith, optimistically arguing that a noblewoman joining their organisation opens the door for many others to follow her lead—and the more, the merrier, right? 

– Finally we could’ve had Granite as the paranoid one, convinced that Della has ulterior motives, that she’s a spy sent by the Council/Alden and that she should subject herself to a mind-reading if she wishes to stay in Alluveterre. 

And just like that you would’ve had the opportunity for the Collective to be effectively characterised, as well as for Della to truly make a case for herself, to show badass skills like persuasion and de-escalation and networking. Instead of just having her vanish (ha, see what I did there) into thin air the second the discussion no longer revolves around pretty dresses.

I’m sorry but Coiffe easily puts all of these losers to shame. Why is his introduction scene so much more colourful? 

"Argh—I swear I've picked up ichrites in this infernal fur." "Ichrites?" Sophie asked. "A type of insect that feeds on unicorn blood." He leaned against the post of the gazebo, rubbing his back like a bear scratching on a tree. [Neverseen, Ch. 25]

Coiffe’s introduction scene differs from the Collective’s in critical ways: 

Firstly, he’s allowed a whole scene to himself (almost as if he was an important character!) A whole scene where the gang stumbles upon him and reacts to his costume and ridiculous codename. The Collective didn’t get that, because their introductions, codenames and disguises were all packed in 1-2 pages, their descriptions piggy-backing each other without letting room for readers to breathe. 

Secondly, Coiffe distinguishes himself from the rest of the Black Swan members we’ve met because he doesn’t take his codename seriously and profoundly dislikes wearing his disguise. That’s the key thing about this guy: he’s not entirely “all-in” with the Black Swan, he actually has his minor disagreements with them—which I’m certain was Shannon’s way of making him dislikeable. But to me a contrarian character is far more likeable than no character at all. Coiffe disagrees with the concept of kids doing dangerous missions, and this goes hand in hand with Timkin’s statement later on (Ch. 63): “Unlike others in the Black Swan, I do not endanger children. Especially my children.” 

Last and most importantly, Coiffe’s introduction scene immediately gives out clues to his real identity. Because Shannon actually knew who it was going to be from the get go. We have not so subtle clues like Sophie instantaneously deciding that she and Coiffe aren’t “going to be friends”, or Coiffe saying Kesler has nothing better to do in his life than making Furry potions (based asf). But perhaps my favourite clue is when Coiffe has this tiny exposition dump about ichrites which are specifically pests affecting unicorns. You know. Because caring for unicorns is his job. As Timkin.

I tried mighty hard, yet couldn’t find any clue to Squall, Wraith, Blur (or even Granite)’s real identities in their introduction scene. 

I know I’m fixating way too much on this but there is nothing more aggravating than useless and boring characters. Shannon made a fatal mistake by introducing the Collective as a bulk rather than as individual people. She keeps making this specific mistake with the Council too—not realising that putting all 12 Councillors in a room and describing their appearance is not going to do justice to any of them. 

There’s a reason why Oralie, Kenric, Bronte, Emery, Alina and Terik are the only Councillors who stand out: they were introduced apart from the Council. They get to have their own spotlight. Same reason why the Neverseens are the most interesting group: most members get to have their individual introduction scenes. Their own personalities and skills and backstories. Their own time to shine. 

This is the ABC of character writing. I can't believe Shannon didn’t, like, understand this by the time she wrote Neverseen...

3// Useless Disguises

I had this rant about Granite (as a secret identity) bringing nothing to the table in the Cognate section. I now want to expand this point to the Collective and Black Swan as a whole.

The big idea with disguises and secret identities is that they allow for interactions that would not have been possible with a single identity. Think Miraculous and the love square and how every ship dynamic is slightly different because of the dual identities. I don't even like Miraculous but that's something they understood better than Shannon.

Let's just bring back the example of Granite/Tiergan. In an alternate universe where Neverseen is a good book, Fitz would've reacted differently to Granite's criticisms than he used to with Tiergan’s. Since Tiergan has history with Alden, Fitz would've been able to shield himself from most of Tiergan's critics by dismissing them as Tiergan just being a Vacker hater. But with Granite, it would've been a whole other can of worms. 

"[...]—while you're an incredibly talented Telepath—your skills simply do not match Sophie's." Sophie cringed, wondering if the criticism would bother Fitz. But he grinned at her and said, "Yeah, she makes us all look bad." "She does indeed," Granite agreed, his face cracking further as he smiled. [Neverseen, Ch.13]

From Fitz's POV, this stranger has no reason to lie to him or be a hater. So Fitz would be much more butthurt by Granite's harsh words than he would've ever been with Tiergan's. It could’ve also created dramatic irony, with Fitz complaining that it didn’t mean much when Tiergan criticised his skills because Tiergan hated his father’s guts, but Granite had no reason to be mean to him… and then readers would’ve reread this book and been like: this is gold. 

Then you have Squall, Dex's mother for fuck’s sake, who gets 8 lines in this entire book, 6 of which could've been spoken by anyone else in the Collective because that's how impersonal she sounds:

"Della," she corrected. "Surely if I have to call you those crazy code words, you can call me by my familiar name." Squall's face crackled as she smiled. "Della it is." [Neverseen, Ch.9]

"He's right," Squall agreed. "And I'm sorry, but I must get back or someone will notice I'm missing." She removed a frosted purple-black crystal from her crackly cloak and leaped away in a flurry of snow. [Neverseen, Ch.9]

"You aren't actually considering staging an ambush?" Granite said when Mr. Forkle stroked his chin. "There's no time to prepare," Squall added. [Neverseen, Ch.19]

With Squall being revealed as Juline occurring mid-Lodestar, there was no time to properly set up an interesting relationship between Squall and Dex that could've transcended the mother-son dynamic. Or even develop a potential aunt-niece relationship between Squall and Sophie.

There was no time to properly set up the ‘Squall’ part of Juline’s identity, because Shannon has this thing where, the minute the secret identity is revealed, they are usually "merged" into one (see: Leto losing his Loki-esque personality the second he was revealed to be a Mr. Forkle alias). 

Well, no, actually. It's not that there was no time. There was plenty of time. Plenty of scenes where Squall could’ve been added in a meaningful way—to name a few: when the Black Swan praises Dex’s skills as a Technopath (Ch.14), or when Dex believes he “killed Wonderboy” (Ch.31), or when Edaline shows up and Dex gets all teared up because he misses his own mother and Edaline looks so much like her (Ch.36).

Where in the world was Squall in all of these scenes?? Not here, that's for sure.

You cannot convince me that Shannon knew Squall was Juline in Neverseen; there is just no way she would’ve passed on opportunities like these. Especially when you compare it to Coiffe, who had plenty of foreshadowing for his true identity despite being hierarchically less important than Squall and also only appearing in one (1) scene. 

Next are Wraith and Blur... and yes, I'm grouping them into one paragraph because their characters are just that bland. Their identities haven't been revealed, and yet, despite spending Neverseen to Stellarlune in disguises, we haven't learned a single interesting fact about them aside from their abilities. They don’t even have a personality, unless you consider Blur being an idiot to be a character trait. Which I don’t, because everyone in KotLC is an idiot. 

Yes, people theorise that Blur might be Jensi's brother. It's not a theory at this point, it's half-canon, Shannon's just taking her sweet time... or delaying it because Blur never was that important to begin with. All of this to say: we can't really explore Wraith and Blur's dynamics and how they differ from their real identities, because we don't know their real identities. 

I could talk about Physic, but the same point applies to her than to Blur and Wraith. Livvy is beautiful (what do you mean she has purple jewellery on her skin?? peak character design choice) and I wish she was more developed, but it's unfortunately not the case.

Again, if we saw Physic interacting at least once with a person Livvy’s very close to (that is, Quinlin and no one else because misogyny), and their dynamic was completely different, that could've been interesting. Potentially. And no, Biana and Della do not count—their relationship to Livvy was established post-reveal to gaslight readers into thinking the reveal is more significant than it actually was (i.e., not significant at all).

Livvy doesn't have any connections to the main cast, aside from Sophie who doesn't remember her, and Della and Biana whom she was never that close with, so her whole "slipping up and using [her] real name" and her having to face Mr. Forkle's "wrath" if she used her real name (Ch.31) literally had no substance behind it whatsoever.

I don't know why Shannon included those lines when we readers didn’t know who Livvy was until her creation in Nightfall? And never even got a clue of her existence before her being Physic was revealed? Was it just to edge us? Or was Physic supposed to be someone else? 

But the worst offender is by far Coiffe. Because he also had the most potential for an interesting disparity in dynamics—as can be seen by the amount of mentions he gets, compared to his own leaders. Because Sophie, no matter how much Shannon will try to gaslight you, is not that open or that trusting or that forgiving. Unless this is about Keefe in which case yes she is, very much to a fault. 

She can be especially close-minded and stubborn and uncompassionate when it comes to the Hekses, even with Timkin, whom she should have the least feud with. Except she hates Timkin so damn much than when Granite tells her she might come to understand why he is the way he is a little more when going to Exilium, she just "highly doubts that" and moves on, never to think back to this possibility ever again. Why do we not get any hindsight from Sophie when she realises how “awful” Exilium is (it’s not, but that’s a rant for another time)? Why does she not think to herself: good for Timkin that he managed to come back to the Lost Cities? 

We were robbed of Coiffe as a potential “remember who the real enemy is” type of character. Not just for Sophie, but Dex too, who immediately hates Coiffe as if he had X-ray vision and could see Timkin under all that fur. 

"The Black Swan needs a better screening process for their helpers," Dex decided. [Neverseen, Ch. 26]

Also, and this is just me being shallow and superficial, but can we talk about how ugly those disguises are? And how impractical they look? Tell me why you’re going to drag Ice Queen and Talking Asphalt to a mission that requires stealth and running fast if caught. I think Livvy really was onto something when she just decided to put on a Mardi-Gras style mask and call it a day. That’s quick and easy to take/take-off, does the secret-identity deed just fine, and has the advantage of not making you look fucking ridiculous. 

I can’t believe Squall unironically thinks their disguises will make people take them more seriously: 

“Brave words coming from a talking rock,” Councillor Alina said. “Do you honestly expect us to take you seriously in those disguises?” “We do indeed,” Squall said, tilting her frozen head. [Neverseen, Ch.29]

Alina ate them up. She is absolutely correct and don’t let misogyny make you believe otherwise for one second. Because how in the world do you want to be taken seriously when y'all are walking around looking like THIS:

4// What are they teaching these kids . . . 

Sophie studied each of the Councillors, realizing how little she knew about many of them. She didn’t even know most of their names, much less their special abilities. But it seemed safe to assume they were all absurdly powerful. [Neverseen, Ch.29]

It’s at this very moment that I knew the Black Swan was the most useless organisation to have ever damned this series (and believe me, the competition was TOUGH).

Because how in the world do you—in a book centered around tight control over knowledge—decide to not inform 5 of your main operatives (which you had prospected to deploy on this mission for 19 days) about the most basic stuff such as THEIR OPPONENTS’ ABILITIES?

It gets worse than that: Sophie doesn’t even know their NAMES. YEAH. 

Let’s talk about the slowest part of Neverseen’s first 25%, the main reason I dropped 1/3 of my rereadings before even making it to Exillium: the Black Swan’s “training”. 

Because it sucks. 

“We’re working on a plan,” Granite said. “And it’s going to take everyone’s help. Biana—you’ll need to be able to hold your vanish far longer than you currently can. Dex—we managed to get our hands on one of the bolts used on the cells. We’ll need you to master opening it quickly and silently. Sophie and Fitz—we’ll need your minds at their absolute strongest. So we’ve prepared notebooks with exercises to further your Cognate training. And Keefe—we have several Empathy books we need you to familiarize yourself with.” [Neverseen, Ch.11] 

At face-value, this training plan looks decent, right? I mean, except for (poor) Keefe who has the most useless ability and thus the most useless “assignment”, it sounds like a good-enough idea to train the Vanisher to stay invisible for longer periods or for the Technopath to know how to pick lofaster.

But then you arrive at the actual Prentice rescue—which is briefed to the kids literally at the doorstep of Exile when there is no return possible and consent is murky at best—and you realise this entire training was fuck-all.

“The rest of you will be in charge of causing as much chaos as you can generate. Squall, Blur, and Mr. Sencen will head to the most unruly residents. Between your various abilities, you should be able to get them sufficiently riled up. Just be sure to stay on the move so the dwarves don’t catch you.” [Neverseen, Ch.27]

→ So Keefe, who was told to familiarise himself with “several Empathy books” for 19 days, ends up being given a mission that requires zero (0) Empathy. I’m pretty sure he was not included in the “between your various abilities” because how the hell is an Empath going to get anyone “riled up”?

“Meanwhile, I’ll take Della and Biana,” Wraith said, “and we’ll head for the main entrance. We want to look like we’re fleeing, so they divert other patrols to prevent our escape.” “Does that mean we shouldn’t vanish as we run?” Biana asked. “Only intermittently,” Wraith said. “We need to ensure they follow us—but also not give away that it’s our intention. And once we reach the Room Where Chances Are Lost, we’ll vanish completely and hold for Mr. Forkle’s signal." [Neverseen, Ch.27]

→ Biana, who has been told that she needs to vanish for “far longer than she currently can” ends up being told that her mission requires intermittent vanishing. Something that is literally INNATE.

Okay, the second half of her mission (which I doubt they got to do since their plan was ass) is to vanish completely but still, I think her training was not appropriate to the mission at all. And I’m not sure how vanishing would help them escape from dwarves. You know. The species that notoriously relies on their sight the least. 

“Our hope is that all of your efforts will create enough of a distraction for Sophie to lead the rest of us to Prentice. Mr. Dizznee will then be in charge of opening his cell, and Granite and I will tend to Prentice and signal when we’re ready to leave.” [Neverseen, Ch.27]

→ Sophie’s mission is to lead everyone else to Prentice, however her training during those 19 days consisted of 1) long-distance telepathy (Silveny), 2) animal telepathy (Silveny again), and 3) TRUST EXERCISES with Fitz. Where, pray tell, do you see “singling one person’s thoughts among 5111 other people.”

And the sheer fact that they have Sophie do this while completely unprepared and untrained is insanity. Arguably child abuse. Sure, Sophie is the most powerful Telepath to have ever telepathed, but she has never accomplished a feat anywhere this dramatic before.

It breaks the power-scaling in a manner I do not believe Shannon realised, and it’s not brought up as that much of a big deal nor as a power Sophie could perhaps hone later on (she could find the Neverseen in a city if the Black Swan cared enough to train her in this skill). 

You know what could’ve been better, more appropriate training? Granite taking Sophie to the Forbidden Cities to train her in tracking down specific people in crowded places. Yeah. 

→ Dex is actually the only one whose training matched the mission he was assigned. I’m just annoyed that in all of the scenes leading up to the Prentice jail-break, all we see Dex do is working on the Twiggler, rather than the Exile locks like the Black Swan initially said (and this is fully on the Black Swan for distracting him with this side project of theirs). 

In the end, Dex’s training was useless since the Council completely changed the security measures last minute which apparently the Black Swan had not anticipated. I’m not even sure how they got the sample for the locks but whatever. 

“What about me?” Fitz asked. “It doesn’t sound like I’m doing anything.” Dex laughed at that, but fell silent when Granite said, “You’re here for Sophie. She will need someone to lean on, to keep her calm and boost her strength while she tackles our most difficult task.” [Neverseen, Ch.27]

→ Fitz was probably done the most dirty out of all of them. I just know Shannon needed him to be in Exile so she can have the arthropleura incident happen to him (though why she needed Fitz to be impaled by a giant bug, that, I cannot tell) but why lie to him like that?

Granite told Fitz that the Black Swan was going to need his mind “at [its] absolute strongest.” Now I’m no genius or anything, but if someone told me that, I would assume they were… going to use my mind powers. I don’t know. Just a… just a theory I guess. 

But no. Fitz is limited to being Sophie’s personal cheerleader, which he almost fails at since, in my humble opinion as the Neverseen rereader, his little Descryer anecdote wasn’t actually comforting as much as the Sophie glaze that came right at the end of it (“And you’re a thousand times more talented than I am, Sophie. I know you can do this.”)

Maybe if you knew his role was going to be Sophie’s cheerleader, you could, I don’t know, warn him in advance? So he can be good at his only job and not jeopardise the mission because he can’t come up with a good enough story on the spot? 

Just wanna add that Fitz’s most useful contribution in the Prentice jail-break mission is no thanks to the Black Swan’s “training” but due to Fitz self-teaching himself a niche telepathy skill in his free time: 

“Is that better?” he asked, his hands shaking as he lowered them. Sophie nodded. “What did you just do?” “He shared his mental energy,” Mr. Forkle said. “Impressive, Mr. Vacker.” Fitz blushed. “I’ve been practicing.” [Neverseen, Ch.28]

Would it have killed Shannon to make the Black Swan look competent for even 5 seconds? Instead of Fitz saying “I’ve been practicing” he could’ve said something along the lines of “You/Granite taught me well” to show that the Black Swan had anticipated (and prepared for) their dear Moonlark running out of mental energy as they make her do the most tiring task they’ve ever asked of her yet. 

And it is so ridiculous that the Black Swan’s “in-depth training” which specifically aimed to “prepare [them] to rescue Prentice” (their words, not mine) was so insufficient that Fitz had to find the time to self-teach himself the only skill that was actually required of him for the mission. Purely coincidentally, by the way. 

I cannot emphasise how much of a farce this entire “training arc” is. It’s like Shannon didn’t reread. 

What I can do though is make a list of everything the Black Swan could’ve taught these children in 19 days instead of useless hat tricks that are not tailored to the mission at all: 

The Councillors’ individual skills and abilities: to come back to the first quote of this section, it’s insane to me that Sophie so daringly defied the Council without knowing the first thing about 90% of its members. It shouldn’t have been the case and I can’t believe neither she nor the Black Swan attempted to correct this. Not before the mission. Not after. Never.  

The dwarves’ strengths and weaknesses: the Black Swan hires dwarves, ja? Well, these dwarves could’ve taught Sophie and friends what they should expect from the Exile guards instead of having the Vanisher believe she’s safe from the only species that doesn’t rely on their eyes to see. 

Darkness vision: seems obvious since they’re going, you know, underground. I was incredibly annoyed when Dex whined about wanting another Balefire pendant and the Black Swan told him they didn’t want to disturb the roots’ rest. Like, brochacho, there’s a skill for that (I’m shocked to hear that Kesler didn’t train his kids in seeing in the dark?) which the Black Swan could’ve taught these children (and themselves) and not require Balefire at all. And darkness vision could've allowed them to seize advantage of the fact that the Council most likely does not train in those skills as they are underrated. Imagine a chase scene through Exile’s tunnels in complete darkness. Oh, the possibilities. 

The Black Swan cypher runes: why were none of these kids nor Della (save for Sophie who knows these instinctively) trained in learning the code of the secret organisation they’ve just joined? Almost as if the Black Swan cypher runes are useless nonsense. This wouldn’t have been useful in Exile but it would’ve made sense and hey, secret codes are cool, okay? 

5// Pointless Games and Riddles 

Whilst writing Neverseen, Shannon was confronted with a new, terrifying question: how do you make the mysterious, work-from-the-shadows organisation maintain its enigma factor when your main character literally lives with them? 

Her answer to that dilemma was very concise, very simple: mysterious people write riddles and quote proverbs that were written by wiser people than them.

And you know what. Fair enough. It could’ve done the trick if the riddles weren’t so utterly pointless and a massive waste of time for every party involved, and if the wisdoms quoted were the tiniest bit relevant to the troubles at hand. But if I’m writing this rant, it’s because they obviously didn’t do the trick. At all.

Thankfully for everyone (me), the Black Swan wasn’t as enigmatic as the previous books. There are actually only two (2) instances of them writing riddles in this book… which is even worse because how do you fail so embarrassingly at being smart when you’ve only got two attempts at not being dumb. I’m telling y’all the Black Swan can’t be smart to save their lives. 

The first is the bad piece of poetry that’s trying very hard to pass as instructions to navigate Florence:

Take the Path of the Privileged Past eyes that watch eternal, and blood turned precious. Seek the tower that would not yield for the next steps of your journey.

[Neverseen, Ch.2]

For the people who haven’t revisited this cursed book in a while, here are the answers to this bunch of literary nonsense: 

“Path of the Privileged”: Vasari’s Corridor 

“Eyes that watch eternal”: Cosimo’s eyes 

“Blood turned precious”: butchers were replaced by gold shops because the Medicis didn’t like the smell of blood

“The tower that would not yield”: the Manellis’ tower that they didn’t let Vasari destroy 

Now if this was a fun, low-stake game and if Sophie and friends were normal teenagers on a nice field trip to Florence, this non-rhyming riddle would’ve been more than appropriate. But it isn’t. And they aren’t. 

They’re on the run from the government, and are looking for the fastest way to get themselves to safety. They literally skipped a night of sleep and breakfast for this shit. The Black Swan heard all of that loud and clear and thought that having them look for which window matches Sophie’s memories would be worth everyone’s time. 

Then Mr. Forkle has the NERVE to say this: 

“You kids took your sweet time getting here!” [Neverseen, Ch.4]

Bro—WHOSE BLOODY FAULT IS THAT?!? God forbid these children take a gelato break after you’ve made them wake up at the ass crack of dawn to try to decipher your low-quality riddle whose sole purpose was to pat your own back?? 

Seriously, Neverseen probably has the dumbest opening to any kotlc book because tell me the purpose of this Florence trip. I wouldn’t have minded it if it was some last minute stop to try to shake the Council off their tracks but it isn’t. The Florence trip (as well as the riddle, and Sophie’s plethora of fun facts about the city which are directly quoted out of the Vasari Corridor Wikipedia page—yes, I checked) was apparently planned out years in advance. 

“Is that what you think it was?” Mr. Forkle asked. “Luck?” Sophie sighed. “Exactly how many weird memories have you given me?” “As many as you’ll need.” “How can you possibly know that?” Fitz asked. “Very careful planning.” [Neverseen, Ch.5]

This is such BULLSHIT. What this is showing isn’t that the Black Swan is very good at planning, but that they use Sophie’s memory carelessly to store anything and everything they have a hunch could be useful (Stellarlune confirms this).

Like, no matter how you want to look at it, Sophie memorising all of these facts about Vasari’s Corridor is not a flex at all and will never (and I really mean never) bring anything to the Moonlark Project… whatever the fuck that even is. 

And the reason I’m so frustrated with this plotline is that it was such an easy fix. Such. an. easy. fix.

It’s all about which facts Sophie memorised, and what themes they were all pointing at. What they were attempting to warn her about. Because Florence is a city famous for its plagues. Terrible ones. Terribly handled ones, which resulted in many, too many, unnecessary deaths.

For fuck’s sake, there are entire research papers written about how deadly Florence plagues during Renaissance Italy were—research papers which would be far more useful for Sophie to memorise than easily accessible Wikipedia pages. 

But no, the Black Swan, for all their boasting about how good they are at planning and how mYsTeRiOuS they are, actually don’t care about teaching the kids valuable lessons… which links to my previous section, but also the second, even stupider riddle/game they put them through: 

The pendants (ominous music plays)

First of all, the Black Swan pendants are a SCAM. This is revealed to us in their introduction scene, with Calla revealing this to Sophie: 

"That's one of the Black Swan's mysterteries. But you are their heir. Your spot is reserved. All you have to do is accept it." [Neverseen, Ch.12]

The concept of an “heir” was an instant red flag for me and I cannot believe Sophie wasn’t immediately alarmed by the idea that her test was most likely rigged for her to succeed regardless of how she does.

The ONLY TIME the unfairness of this special treatment is brought up is in a fuckass DELETED SCENE. I kid you not:

"You are our heir,” Granite added. “Entrance to the order is your right."  "That’s not to imply that you have no choice in the matter,” Wraith added quickly. “You can still choose to walk away if you’d like,” Blur finished.  Sophie wasn’t going anywhere.  But she didn’t want special treatment, either.  “If you don’t mind,” she said, “I’d like to take the test with my friends." [Neverseen, 4th Deleted Scene]

And I cannot believe she didn’t tell… anyone? Neither in this deleted scene nor in the actual book does Sophie think about bringing up that the test was rigged in her favour... meaning it could have easily been rigged against the others. And in both the deleted scene and the actual book, Sophie thinks that just taking the test like the others erase the fact that she still gets special treatment. Whether she succeeds or not, she gets in the Black Swan. Her friends didn't have an equal chance and she doesn't bring it up for no good reason.

Worse, in the next chapter she’s all proud like “yeah, I got it on the first try” and everyone else is just “honestly not surprised” even though it was through NO MERIT OF HER OWN. 

Agency WHERE. 

Choice WHERE. 

I refuse to believe that “I will do everything in my power to help my world” and how much they “believe” in it and are able to “uphold” this promise when they pronounce it even matters. It’s just not possible.

Because how does a lifeless, mindless gadget measure the sincerity of anything, exactly? Was it actually a recording device, with the Collective on the other line, giggling and shushing each other before pressing the button after x amount of trials? Like… how? Just. How. 

If the test was rigged in favour of Sophie then we should really be asking ourselves why Keefe had more tries than everyone else. Did the Black Swan decide he needed more resistance than his friends? Did they want to give him some kind of ego check? 

That’s one of the very rare times where Keefe actually deserved a mini-consolation scene, just a quick “oh and by the way they probably pre-determined how many tries we’ll have to do before getting it to open so don’t think about it too much” from Sophie would’ve done wonders for this guy’s self-esteem. 

Again, I’m frustrated because the concept of the test being rigged was fascinating but not explored, since Shannon refuses to make the Black Swan be the bad guys even though they clearly are. 

I designed an alternative because I will never uphold complaining without offering a solution: 

Instead of only swearing an oath to a black box hoping it can hear you, there could have been a "record" button that you have to press each time you pronounce the oath. Instead of the Black Swan judging the “sincerity” of the oath, this could have been a test of resilience, by programming the box to only open after x amount of presses. This could’ve been 10, 20, 50, or even 100 times. 

Then, because that’s where the fun of a riddle is, you could have characterised the main gang’s various reactions to it, instead of arbitrarily deciding that Fitz would get it right on the 2nd trial and Biana and Dex on the 3rd. How each of the main characters handled this puzzle could’ve been great to show who they are as people and where their different strengths lie: 

Sophie would’ve stubbornly pressed the button again and again, swearing the oath over and over until she gets it to open.

Fitz would’ve lost patience and started spamming the button believing it didn’t work, quickly working his way through the required number of button presses.

Dex would’ve believed the box was malfunctioning and broken it down to understand how it works, figured the trick after obtaining the pendant, and laughed at how simple the mechanism was all along. 

Biana would’ve sneaked out of her room to ask the others how they handled it, learning either from Dex or Fitz what the trick was.

Keefe would’ve given up, believing that the Black Swan must not think him “sincere” enough—or not believing himself to be sincere enough.

Della… we don’t care about Della. She’s not a main character. Sorry.

And if you thought the pendants’ test being rigged was the worst thing about them well. You would be wrong. It’s only the tip of the stupidity iceberg.

If we zoom in a bit more, we get the little messages that Sophie and friends each received and it’s just…

Ugh.

You cannot convince me they actually meant those stupid messages to “train [their] minds to think critically” (Ch.13). Critically where. Someone needs to follow their own advice because hellloooow??? The call is coming from INSIDE THE HOUSE. PICK IT UP. 

And because I refuse to give these idiots a break, I will now break down each of these messages individually to show you how stupid they are. 

“Glad you made the right choice.” (Sophie)

That’s just textbook manipulation. I’m not sure how it’s supposed to help Sophie think more critically or teach her how to solve problems. All this message is conveying is that Sophie, the “heir” to the Black Swan, the one whose “spot is reserved” has made the “right” “choice” accepting the rules that THEY have set FOR HER. Basically, the “right choice” here is to accept that she has no agency whatsoever and that the Black Swan’s manipulation has worked wonders because she is exactly where they want her to be. This is quite possibly the direct opposite of training her mind to think critically. Disgusting message, -1000/10. 

I don’t know HOW this girl puts up with these jerks. 

“To show you the world in new ways.” (Biana)

Where. 

When. 

How. 

Why. 

What. 

Name me one time the Black Swan has challenged Biana’s views ever. You know this could’ve been good foreshadowing if Coiffe had taught them how to use darkness vision before Prentice’s jail-break, or if Calla had been part of the Black Swan and taught Biana how to see other Vanishers. 

Or, if, I don’t know, Forkle had remotely challenged Della’s views about Exillium at all, instead of reinforcing them by calling Waywards the “Unworthy” even though only three people in this book do this (Della, ALINA, and Forkle). The only person who even tries to show Biana the world in new ways is Sophie. Sophie, not the Black Swan who is supposed to be the teacher in this book. Sophie, not the pendant that was gifted by the Black Swan. Lie/10. 

“For when you need to look closer.” (Della) 

Does the pendant contain a magnifying glass? Does Della have poor eyesight? Perhaps, perhaps not, but that’s not brought up so you know what it is. Scam/10. 

“Because seeing is believing.” (Dex)

This one is arguably one of the worst because that’s literally a religious quote lmfao. It’s from some clergyman who lived in the 17th century. Anyways. How this ended up in Dex’s pendant, I have no fucking clue. Did Shannon look up quotes that sounded wise or what—

What’s even dumber is that the Black Swan couldn’t even be asked to write the entire quote, as if they ran out of ink. The full quote is: “Seeing is believing, but feeling is the truth.” 

Still, this has no business being in Dex’s pendant and also is not going to make him think any more critically or teach him how to solve problems. Unless they want him to convert to Christianity after he saw David’s marble stick in Florence? I don’t even know man. Dex is too atheist for this shit/10. 

“The smallest things can be the most dangerous.” (Fitz)

Okay so Granite and Forkle were DEFINITELY on crack when they wrote this because who the hell thought it made perfect sense to give this quote to the TALLEST, BIGGEST GUY OF THE GROUP. What are they even on about? What is Fitz going to do with this information? My Kindle note says: “they were trying to warn him about Umber” but that’s just because of my personal headcanon that Umber is super short. 

The worst thing about this message is that it’s the ONLY ONE that actually becomes relevant later in the story, when Biana and Sophie encounter Ruy. Biana says this: 

"I just remembered what Fitz's note had said about the smallest things being the most dangerous and I thought... why not?" [Neverseen, Ch.20]

Okay, Shannon, riddle me this. Why would you give the message to Fitz if in the end it’s BIANA who’s going to use it? I genuinely don’t understand why Shannon couldn’t just write it so that Biana gets the wisdom that she will be the only one to apply later on??

Did Shannon think it was too big of a coincidence?

Did she think it would make the Black Swan look a little too big brained? THEY NEED THAT. They NEED a big brain moment to beat the dumbasses allegations!!! 

It’s driving me crazy that only ⅙ of the messages ended up being helpful (barely) in the end, and it wasn’t even allocated to the right character? Thank goodness Biana thought about her brother’s riddle rather than her own. I wonder what would’ve happened if she’d been thinking about “seeing the world in new ways” as she spoke to Ruy? Or worse: “glad you made the right choice.” 

Honestly at this point just make… none of them helpful. It took away from the impulsive move that Biana pulled in that scene, in a meagre attempt at making the Black Swan seem more useful than they really are (i.e., not at all). Not that Biana’s idea (or Chapter 19 as a whole) made sense either way but… yeah. Wrong person/10. 

“Do not lose your way.” (Keefe) 

This quote is so, so, so fucking stupid because at that point in time (Ch. 11-13) Forkle had no reason whatsoever to believe that Keefe could lose his way.

Because this note was written 1-2 business days before Keefe learned about his mother’s “death”. So unless Forkle knew about the news from Lur and Mitya beforehand (he did not, Sophie was the first elf to hear about it), then the warning makes no sense. At all. Timing??/10. 

So to go back to my programmed button-presses idea, I believe instead of personalised, stupid sounding proverbs and manipulative notes, the Black Swan could’ve taught everyone the same lesson: you must be ready to fail 99 times to succeed on the 100th.

And then Granite and Forkle would’ve come to them at breakfast all smug about their little test only for Dex, Biana and Fitz to reveal that they figured out the trick and found quicker ways around it—making the Black Swan part-frustrated, part-impressed. 

*puts my head in my hands* this book could’ve been so good if it was good—

6// Project Moon-who? 

So you know how, to this date (i.e. Unraveled being the latest book), we still have no clue about what Project Moonlark is even about? Well. I feel like if there was a book where we could’ve learned the most about the project that is supposed to be the literal spine of this series, it was going to be Neverseen. 

You know. The book where Sophie lives with two of her creators (Forkle and Calla) for about two months. The book where Sophie takes her “reserved spot” as the sole “heir” to the Black Swan. The book where Prentice is finally freed. 

Even Simon and Schuster (the publishing house), who created KotLC guides for educators, believe that Neverseen was meant to reveal more about the Black Swan and Project Moonlark, which I find laughable to no end: 

“Describe the purpose of Project Moonlark” Do you… want kids to fail??? 

Even Shannon couldn’t tell you what the purpose of the project is. Because Auntie is allergic to answers and might genuinely burst into flames if she tried to even remotely balance the ratio of set ups to pay offs in her books. 

Okay, perhaps I am being a little mean. Technically, Neverseen does provide some new details about Project Moonlark, which I will first look at before concerning myself with how they aren’t all that relevant or don’t make sense—and what should’ve been revealed instead and how. 

Revelation #1: Calla was part of Project Moonlark 

Obviously this wasn’t a big gasp or twist or anything readers had wanted to know—since we learn this in Chapter 13 (a.k.a Calla’s second scene ever). There was no build up, no mysteries, no “I wonder who could’ve participated in this project.” Sophie herself had assumed until then that Forkle was the sole brain behind it, though that’s partly on Sophie not knowing much about proper scientific research.

Still. Calla being part of Project Moonlark shouldn’t count as a big revelation at all—however it could’ve and should’ve been used as an opportunity to reveal more about the project… preferably with answers that Forkle would’ve rather delayed. But of course that would require Calla to not be an elf bootlicker for five fucking minutes and disagree with Forkle on fundamental issues. Which is not the case.

What do we learn from Calla about Project Moonlark? Nothing exciting, really. Mostly because Calla doesn’t seem to know the difference between a teenage girl and a bird:

Calla nodded. "I was the one who chose the project's name." [Neverseen, Ch.11]

“They leave their hatchlings alone because they know their young need to be strong. Moonlarks face more predators than most other creatures. So even though the parents follow their eggs across the ocean and are never far away from the babies, they do not make contact, and they do not bring them to the nest. Their instincts know that if they did, they would shelter the younglings and weaken their ability to survive.” [Neverseen, Ch.20]

As we can see, Calla seems mostly concerned with the metaphor behind the project’s name more so than the Black Swan’s actual “plans” for Sophie’s future. That’s why her participation in the project feels incredibly hollow and superficial: she doesn’t do anything, really, and denies “helping” and knowing about the Black Swan’s plans:

“So . . . you helped tweak my genes,” Sophie clarified, [...] “ ‘Helped’ is the wrong word. I was there to keep the Black Swan grounded, and ensure they never strayed from what was natural, or lost sight of the fact that they were sparking the life of an innocent girl.” [Neverseen, Ch.12]

... Almost as if Shannon was afraid to make Calla morally dubious (which, you know, wouldn’t be very good considering Calla was written to die) by either making her participate in the shady parts of the project or by having her actively lie/withdraw information from Sophie. 

Calla is supposed to be this pure, near ‘holy’ figure that makes sure the Black Swan remains “grounded” and ethical, despite Project Moonlark breaking ethics such as informed consent (from Sophie, who didn’t ask to be created, and from Emma and William Foster, who didn’t know their child wasn’t biologically theirs and would be stripped away from them along with their memories of her time with them). 

I have posted before about how Calla should’ve been morally grey at best, since yes, Project Moonlark does severely violate the laws of nature—such as the fact that no elf is supposed to be a Teleporter, and no elf is supposed to have brown eyes, and no elf is supposed to have an impenetrable mind, and no elf is supposed to have more than two abilities, and no elf is supposed to have their abilities triggered at 5 years old, etc...

The narrative later turns around and calls Gisela’s shenanigans unethical while upholding Project Moonlark as this logical and safe experiment—which is just the pot calling the kettle black. Sophie may have had a whole team creating her, but genetic experiments always, always carry unpredictable elements.

There is no such thing as zero risk. 

That’s why moonlarks don’t lay just one perfect egg, they lay multiple eggs at once, because only the strongest will survive (minute of silence to wishfully think about the moonlark twins…).  

In a deleted line, Calla reveals that she’s the one who recommended Oralie as Sophie’s biological mother—but we will ignore this information and thank the sky that it was deleted because something about it just irks me.

The deleted line is here if you're curious:

Another issue with Calla playing dumb (? I feel?) about how much she knows of the project means we were robbed from learning what truly drives her: 

“Does that mean you know what they’re planning for me?” Sophie asked. “ ‘Plan’ is also the wrong word. I know their hopes—mostly because I share them.” She turned away, humming under her breath and making more reveriebells blossom. [Neverseen, Ch.12]

Here she (conveniently) leaves out the part about sharing what their “hopes” (and thus, hers) are, which means we are left with no clear idea of what Calla wanted from Sophie.

This was her only chance to tell us her deeper motivations and she fumbled miserably because singing to flowers is more important than proper characterisation, apparently. 

And she’s dead now. So we will definitely never know. 

I swear, I better not be seeing any vague “Calla would be proud *crocodile tears*” moment from Flori in Elysian—or, hell, a godforsaken KotLC 11—because we have no idea if she truly would.

What did she want? What did Calla and the Black Swan hope? Why would she join a project centered around an elf and her super-special abilities and human upbringing? WHAT'S IN IT FOR THE GNOMES????? For the other species????

We. Will. Never. Know. 

The reality is, Calla being part of Project Moonlark adds no value to the mystery whatsoever nor does it get us readers (and Sophie) any-fucking-where. 

Either Shannon should’ve taken the leap of faith and made an unapologetic morally grey Calla (IMAGINE), or she should’ve made a morally grey Calla that has a micro-redemption arc in this book by revealing more to Sophie about her fate than the Black Swan would necessarily allow her at that point in time (DOUBLE IMAGINE WITH EXTRA EXCLAMATION POINTS). 

Too late for that, though. 

Revelation #2: Forkle is *not* the father 

[Insert shocked Pikachu face.] Feels like there’s an “allegedly” missing here. Forkle is allegedly not the father. Because I actually don’t trust anything this man has ever said or done. Especially not on a secret as BIG as this one: 

“Then why would you list yourself as family?” Fitz asked. “Because I am family. My name is the one on her Inception Certificate. Someone had to vouch for her existence. [...]" [Neverseen, Ch.40]

“Someday you may understand,” Mr. Forkle told Sophie. “But for now I can at least assure you—as I did with your concerns about Jolie—that I am not your genetic father.” Keefe grabbed Mr. Forkle’s wrist. “He’s telling the truth. And . . . he actually feels kinda bad about it.” “Of course I do! Project Moonlark may have been unconventional. But I am your family. And you are mine.” [Neverseen, Ch.40]

[Okay so this rant is absolutely not here to push my Forkle Is The Father Theory on y’all or anything… but I did highlight in pink how Forkle could be playing with words here, lying by omission thanks to the (then unknown) fact that he has a secret twin. And by the way? The italics are in the canon text, not my additions. I find them incredibly suspicious, as if Shannon is hinting that Forkle is playing severely with words. Which would explain why he feels “kinda bad about it.” Okay now I can shut the fuck up about my theories.] 

So for now we are supposed to believe that Forkle is *not* the father, or, at the very least, that the Forkle speaking to Sophie in that scene is not her father. Sure. I’ll take it.

And just so you know. I do not blame Neverseen for not revealing Sophie’s biological parents—it would be a ridiculous complaint to have. It's just too soon. Way too soon.

Revelation #3: Neverseen is a scam

Because that’s it. There’s no more new information that Sophie learns in this book about herself or Project Moonlark, in spite of—as previously said—Sophie sharing a roof with two of her creators (actually three, if you count Forkle as two individuals. Which I do not). I guess you could add in the Inception Date as a reveal, but I don't think it directly relates to Project Moonlark.

Also there was this line:

“You’re a monster,” Sophie growled. “Said the living lab experiment. Tell me, did he spark your life and then freeze you and keep tweaking?” “Of course not!” Mr. Forkle turned to Sophie. “Any tweaks I made to your DNA were done before your inception. I implanted your embryo immediately.” [Neverseen, Ch.22]

... but since Sophie wouldn't have been bothered whether her embryo was frozen or not, I do not consider this to be a "revelation".

There’s a throwaway line in Ch.39 about Sophie having yet another ability to trigger (i.e. Enhancing) but that’s not in this book. And I hate Enhancing with a burning passion. So it doesn’t count. 

My point is. We don’t learn sufficiently enough about Project Moonlark in this book despite being the most Black Swan- and Forkle-centric (472 mentions…) book in the entire series—much, much to my chagrin. 

This is worsened by the fact that Project Moonlark is the only known active project the Black Swan has going on, which unfortunately means that we readers are left with the sour impression that the Black Swan doesn’t do fuck all most of the time aside from handwaving Sophie towards their vague goals.

Which is more than a mere impression, really. It’s the truth. The Prentice rescue mission is technically damage-control for Project Moonlark, so it doesn’t even count. 

7// Come On, Do Something

The Black Swan basically shot themselves in the foot as a credible organisation the second they decided that they would let the Council—you know, the people who were so comically incapable that the Black Swan had to be formed in the first place—handle the plague. 

As I’ve said in the Plague Rant, the Council shouldn’t have worried about the plague until the Lost Cities gnomes went on a strike. Because the gnomes from the colonies are in-de-pen-dent, meaning their freedom came at the price of not having the elves and goblins’ protection from the ogres. 

The Council would also not want to risk upsetting the ogres further, since the treaties state the following: 

“[...] But the ogre treaty is like, ‘We promise we won’t use our abilities on you, or visit your cities, or ask too many questions about anything you’re doing, and you’re allowed to continue building weapons as long as you promise not to use them, and you can do all kinds of other dangerous things too and we won’t stop you, and if we do, you have the right to declare war.’ [...]” [Neverseen, Ch.24]

But this would’ve required Neverseen to stand on business and follow Everblaze’s lead which portrayed the Councillors as a differently-but-just-as-evil group of people than the Neverseens. 

If Neverseen was truly punk instead of merely posing for punk posters, then the Neverseens and Councillors would’ve been Charybdis and Scylla—both awful but one is just ever so slightly less evil than the other. I said what I said. 

My point is, if the Black Swan wanted something to do in this book aside from Project Moonlark, all they had to do was work on developing their own cure, which would’ve allowed them to get on top of everyone else and prevent blackmail as seen with Dimitar’s ultimatum in Ch.62. 

But nope. Instead, we have Forkman glazing the people he (allegedly) disapproves of: 

"[...] The Council has been extremely guarded with their information, and at the moment they’re allowing no visitors. But I do know that all of our best physicians are working to isolate the pathogen. I’m sure they’ll find the cure soon.” [Neverseen, Ch.7]

“[...] I’ll have to rally my sources and see if Oralie has evidence for her suspicions. In the meantime, please put this out of your mind. You know better than most, Miss Foster, how truly powerful our medicine can be. I have no doubt the gnomes will recover soon. Shall we?” [Neverseen, Ch.7]

Translation: "I put all my faith in Big Daddy Council being exceptionally competent for once because I don’t want to distract myself with the low-lives that are the gnomes."

Now imagine if the Council had categorically refused to suspect the ogres, or they'd decided to remain entirely neutral (until strikes from Lost Cities gnomes arise, that is), forcing the Black Swan to deploy more resourcefulness than ever and recruit people who would be the most qualified to find the cure. Completely random suggestion here but… 

Why not Cadence? 

There she was in Everblaze, making a name for herself by standing up for Sophie in front of Dimitar, challenging him in front of the entire population, and making the Council look so bad in comparison that people were ready to elect her as Kenric’s successor despite barely knowing her.

If there was any book to recruit Cadence into the Black Swan, it was Neverseen. Arguably Lodestar. To me, recruiting her in Nightfall is criminally late—especially since she’s the one making the offer. 

Because surely, the Black Swan must’ve taken notice of her growing disapproval of the ogres. Surely, they should’ve been able to tell that Cadence, the diplomat, the decades-long researcher into ogre microbiology, would be the most qualified to study an ogre-manufactured plague and perhaps develop its cure. 

Except apparently the Black Swan is dumb and blind and probably doesn’t care about the gnomes all that much to invest even the smallest amount of their limited brain cells into saving them. 

I can't believe Cadence just... gave them her markchain at the end of Neverseen? Just like that? What did they tell her to convince her? Why is the moment they convinced Lady Cadence Talle to betray both the Council and King Dimitar OFF-PAGE? Why was Sophie not there when it happened? And why didn't the Black Swan not instantly recruit her afterwards?

Sophie removed the silver pendant hanging from her neck and handed it to Alv*r. She was still stunned Lady Cadence had agreed to loan it to them. [Neverseen, Ch.66]

And even if the Black Swan hadn’t worked on finding the cure and let Alpha Council handle it, there was so much damage control that they could’ve done instead.

They could’ve relocated the evacuees themselves, they could’ve helped regrouping families, they could’ve offered food and shelter and moral support to the diseased. They could’ve acted as placeholders for the Council. 

They could’ve taught Sophie and friends that rebellion is not always violent. 

That, sometimes, rebellion is stepping up when no one else wants to. 

*Mic Drop* 

Conclusion

And on this gorgeous note we are going to end here because I really am running out of fucks to give and will to live. For context, I started writing this rant in March. Yeah 🤡

There was so much more to rant about, from Jolie’s odd erasure in Neverseen despite her rising importance in Everblaze and her haphazard parallel with Keefe in Lodestar, to Prentice’s rescue mission having no business being that stupid, to the callous mistreatment of Gethen that makes the Black Swan no better than the Council and Neverseens. 

1// The Collective: Council Copycats? 

"Everyone, I'd like you to meet Squall, Blur, Wraith, and Granite," Mr. Forkle told them. [Neverseen, Ch.9]

From this quote and on, Shannon starts playing the most hardcore Spot The Difference game between the Collective and the Council... and that really shouldn't have been the case. 

So here are their most suspicious similarities.

1. They're all elves

Which makes sense for the Council since they’re the rulers of the elves—albeit the more the series progress, the more the Councillors state verbatim that they’re rulers of the entire planet.

But with the Black Swan, the Collective all being elves... yeah, I really have to question the logic and ethics of that. 

The Black Swan are supposed to be this multispeciesal organisation that cares about inclusion and diversity, as shown by quotes such as this one:

“[...] The dwarven king brought me here when I revealed the existence of our organization. He thought it would be the perfect place for us to make a fresh start.” “So King Enki is on our side?” Della asked. “He’s not against the Council, if that’s what you’re wondering. But he has felt for some time that the Councillors’ methods are not working. Many dwarves have offered their assistance—though at the moment most have returned to their cities. [...]” [Neverseen, Ch.7]

They believe that interspecies cooperation is vital to the betterment of the world—*cough* unless the species are “hostile” like the ogres or trolls or humans in which case they are useless and we shouldn’t try recruiting them *cough*

Project Moonlark is literally framed as being a multispeciesal initiative: 

For some reason she'd imagined the project only included Mr. Forkle, sitting alone in a lab with a microscope and some Petri dishes. But now she could picture a whole team---multiple people and species brainstorming and planning, resting their hopes on her to be their Moonlark. [Neverseen, Ch.13]

“Multiple species” but only one (1) of them is allowed to have any sort of leadership… and it’s conveniently the species that has repeatedly imposed their dominance in every other field and institution. Great. That's fair.

And you know what, I could have forgiven the Collective only having elvin member but why the FUCK is Calla and the gnomes and the dwarves NOT counted as Black Swan members at all? None of them are mentioned to have a Black Swan pendant which is supposed to show their belonging to the organisation. 

Worse, Calla and the gnomes (and the dwarves too, if Shannon cared enough to give them any lines of dialogue) consistently exclude themselves from the Black Swan as if they are not proper members of the group which drives me INSANE: 

"That's one of the Black Swan's mysteries. But you are their heir. Your spot is reserved. [...]" [Neverseen, Ch.12]

"Lur and Mitya have served the Black Swan nearly as long as I have," Calla explained. [Neverseen, Ch.16]

The second quote is killing me because this kind of language (“served the Black Swan”) is exclusively used by gnomes and dwarves, meanwhile every elvin member is said to be “part of” the Black Swan. 

There are so many examples in Neverseen alone of the elves being described as “with” or “part of” the Black Swan, whereas I couldn’t find you one example of this kind of language used for a gnome or dwarf to save my life:  

"Of course I did! I couldn't exactly say, 'I'm with the Black Swan and this was part of our plan!' This is what I mean, Miss Foster. [...]" [Neverseen, Ch.32]

"It's weird," Biana admitted. "Are you part of the Black Swan?" [Neverseen, Ch.38]

Even Timkin—whose sole mission so far can be described as “forest guide”—was worthy of language that framed him as on equal ground with the Black Swan (even though he very much isn't): 

"I hope that means you're part of the Black Swan," Sophie said. [Neverseen, Ch.26]

"If you hate the Black Swan so much, why are you one of them?" Sophie asked. [Neverseen, Ch.63]

Meanwhile, Calla, who worked on the Black Swan's biggest (and only) project, doesn’t get a pendant or a seat at the big guy’s table or a code name or ANYTHING? 

Calla smiled her green-toothed smile. "I know this might be hard to believe, but I've been part of Project Moonlark since the beginning." [Neverseen, Ch.11]

What would be hard to believe? That a gnome participated in such project? Like. What.

Seriously. This is just Racism™ because please explain to me what makes Squall or Della or Timkin worthier to be called “Black Swan members” than Calla? Nothing, right. She deserves a spot in the Collective more than every Collective member besides maybe Forkle. 

I know I am way too pressed about the treatment of a fictional race of people but genuinely the way the gnomes (and dwarves) are treated as mere numbers yet ironically never seem to count makes my blood boil. But this isn’t the Gnomes and the Plague Rant Part II this is the Black Swan rant. 

2. They all have an ability (none of which are stigmatised)

We all know the elves’ bad habit of discriminating based on abilities sucks, and the Councillors all having an ability makes complete sense. 

Again, it’s the Collective being a perfect copy of the Council that is bonkers to me. Because they’re supposed to be above abilities discrimination. Because their group is supposed to be against stereotypes and ability supremacy.

Except the more you learn about the Black Swan, the more you doubt these claims.

Here is the ability composition of the Council: two Telepaths (counting Kenric), as well as an Empath, an Inflictor, a Descryer, a Vanisher, a Phaser, a Polyglot-Flasher, a Conjurer, a Vociferator, a Charger, a Guster, and a Beguiler. 

Now, here is the ability composition of the Council’s dickriders Collective: two Telepaths (technically three), as well as a Froster, a Phaser and a Vanisher. 

I mean there is a reason why so many people think one of the Collective members could be a Councillor. The abilities overlap almost entirely.

And not only do every member of the Collective have an ability, but none of these abilities are stigmatised. Telepaths are literally the crème de la crème of the elvin world and have been shown to get preferential treatment every fucking time. They have more job opportunities related to their ability than every other elf. They are the most privileged group of elves—argue with the wall. 

Why does the Collective not have a Shade, Psionipath, or Pyrokinetic? And most jarringly, why are there no Talentless people in the Collective? 

Actually, if it weren’t for Timkin the Diversity Hire, I could have argued that the Neverseen are far more “punk” than the Black Swan because at least they include Pyrokinetics, Shades and Psionipaths in their ranks—and even grant them leadership. The Black Swan is just a mini-Council and that's not playing in their favour.

To me the quickest way Shannon could have given the Black Swan the "moral high ground" was if the Black Swan employed more Talentless people (and gave them actually important roles, not “babysitter”).

The best example was making Timkin part of the Collective/Project Moonlark. Or make Livvy Talentless. We don’t know about Livvy’s ability but I swear it would have been mentioned if she didn’t have one by now, so I’m going to count her as Not-Talentless. 

If abilities truly don’t matter (even though your main project relies on giving 5 different abilities to one elf) then we shouldn’t be sitting here asking what do the Collective members have over Talentless people… other than their abilities. 

3. The members all (allegedly) have equal power and the same duties

This is probably the one thing that doesn’t make sense for the Council either. When you have a ruling body of 12 people, the best decision you could make is distribute power and duties. It's called specialisation.

Emery, Oralie, Bronte, Terik and Kenric are the only Councillors with specialised roles, and those roles hardly count as 'duties'.

Emery is the designated spokesperson, Oralie is the human lie detector, Kenric is the Washer, Bronte is the old guy (I can’t believe that’s an actual thing but Keeper did introduce seniority—i.e. agism—and went nowhere with it) and Terik can read people’s “potential” but prefers not to because [insert bullshit excuse here]. 

Those aren't duties.

When I’m talking about duties, I mean responsibilities like treasurer or scribe or diplomat or recruiter. Those kinds of things. Specialised knowledge and skillsets that makes Councillors not as interchangeable.

Just imagine for a minute that each Councillor had their own domain where they are the best expert in their field? One Councillor could be more knowledgeable in Health, another in Education, and another in Entertainment, etc.

Instead we just have 12 people who always show up as a pack in every room and do the same things and talk over each other without anyone bringing anything unique to the table. Delete half of the Council and nothing changes. But that’s a rant for another time.

The Collective has the same issue and it’s even worse with them because why. Would you not. Have competent people lead?

Wraith, Squall, Blur and Granite are completely useless—so useless in fact that they get mogged by their subordinates: 

→ Livvy is a skilled physician

→ Cadence is a skilled microbiologist and diplomat as well as the second most talented Polyglot in the world

→ Calla is an expert in plant pollination 

→ Timkin has mastered all his skills from his time in Exilium 

→ Prentice is a Keeper (though I still think those are useless) 

→ Jolie was their first double-agent and successfully infiltrated the Neverseen 

→ Tinker is Tinker

Meanwhile Squall has no skill in alchemy despite being married to the best alchemist in the world (misogyny womp womp), Granite has no specific role as a Telepath (which sounds insane to me because he’s the only Telepath that doesn’t excel at anything, I guess coaches truly don’t play, huh), Blur is… what does this guy even do, and Wraith has mastered the (totally useless) art of partially vanishing, good for him. 

Who put these four donkeys in charge, seriously. 

4. Both groups debate telepathically and have a Telepath as their spokesperson

The Collective turned to each other and Sophie was sure they were debating the matter telepathically. The Council used the same trick, so no one could hear them argue. [Neverseen, Ch. 9]

This point will come up multiple times because the Black Swan having telepathic debates infuriates me to no end. It kind of embodies everything wrong with Neverseen’s writing as a whole, which might be why I fixate on it so much. Easier to lash out on specific details than explain why a whole ass book bothers me. 

At least the Council’s telepathic debates made sense? It’s Propaganda 101. They want to preserve a united front. They want to seem like one elf, that's why they dress the same with silver coats and circlets (and not because Shannon could never describe 12 outfits at once) and have a designated spokesperson. It's part of the propaganda that the Councillors all get along and work together super duper well (and not because Shannon was feeling too lazy to flesh them out as individuals.) 

Except the Black Swan's Collective shouldn't care about such things. They shouldn't be afraid to show that they don't always agree. At least, that's what an organisation that prides itself in not wanting to repeat the Council's mistake would do.

But I'm not entirely sure of what organisation Sophie joined, to be honest:

"And make the Council's mistake?" Mr. Forkle asked. "No, I think not. [...]" [Neverseen, Ch. 27]

Not only that, but it makes it so that the Collective requires a Telepath, and requires the Telepath to be the spokesperson, exactly like the Council. Which isn’t that many nickels, but it’s weird that it happened twice.

In fact, I would've liked it better had Mr. Forkle NOT been part of the Collective. Just because you preside over a specific project doesn't mean you should preside over the entire organisation.

Mr. Forkle's skills are (as far as we know) in disguises, surveillance and genetics. None of these make him a good leader. It also gives him far too much power compared to the others.

5. Both groups exploit gnomes, dwarves and children

Elvin superiority strikes again. I think the gnomes and dwarves being said to work for the Black Swan but not being given any membership pendant (implying they were not told to swear fealty like regular members) is telling enough, but I just want to add that the Black Swan is being completely careless with the lives of the gnomes and dwarves they employ.

First of all, the Black Swan uses the dwarves/gnomes’ refuge (Alluveterre) as a fucking hideout (I know it was built for this purpose but I think there is a case to be made about how the gnomes seem to use it as their main home whereas the elves use it as a dispensable hideout), which of course was conveniently deserted by the end of Neverseen lest Shannon’s Golden Boy Keefe has to face any consequences for jeopardising Alluveterre in Lodestar. 

And whilst adult Black Swan members (minus Della and Cadence) are allowed codenames and disguises, this courtesy is not extended to the gnomes, dwarves and children members, who have to openly out themselves as rebels while the leaders are safe and sound behind their ridiculous aliases. If this isn’t convincing enough of how cowardly the Black Swan’s Collective is, I don’t know what is. 

Yegor, Kun, Irja, Ermete, Calla, Amisi, Kloris, Nesrin, Vered, Brier, Della, Sophie, Biana, Tam, Linh, Keefe, Fitz, Dex, Stina, Maruca, Marella and Wylie all showed up to Black Swan missions with their faces exposed and their names shouted carelessly for the enemy’s ears to retain. 

I'm convinced that more than half of these teenagers wouldn’t toss and turn in their beds at night worrying about retaliation and whatnot if the Black Swan hadn’t been so negligent about their anonymity and safety. 

I mean, do we see Blur worrying about being personally targeted? Does Wraith? Squall? Physic? Tinker? Coiffe? FORKLE?

As for the gnomes and dwarves, well… all the named dwarves are dead anyway and I’m sure the gnomes all look the same for the elves and Shannon, so there are no reasons to worry about them being targets of the Neverseen or Council, hahahaha! They just stop existing once they’re done being useful to the elves. They’re instruments. Means to an end. Nothing more.

6. Both groups show disdain/prejudice towards Pyrokinetics, Waywards, Shades, humans and Talentless people that are not Kesler Dizznee

We all know the Councillors are huge bigots especially against humans as reflected by their policies surrounding them, so there’s no need for me to pull out the receipts. The Collective, on the other hand… 

“I know,” Mr. Forkle told her. “Sophie’s mother lost five babies before she sought my help. And while I was working at the clinic I met hundreds of women like her. The most heartbreaking part was that I could’ve fixed them all with a few elixirs—much like I did with your mother. She had no trouble having your sister after you, right?” Sophie nodded. “So why didn’t you help them?” “Because humans lost the right to our assistance when they violated our treaty and prepared for war. We even tried to help them secretly afterward. But they took the gifts we gave them and twisted them into weapons, or bargaining chis for their political agendas, or soggy, chemical-filled Twinkies. So I understand why we had to stop. But it was hard to watch.” [Neverseen, Ch.40] 

This is probably the most egregious example because the audacity to announce so calmly that you let HUNDREDS OF WOMEN miscarry just because they “lost the right to [elves’] assistance.” You’re bringing up fucking Twinkies as one of the reasons why withdrawing help from innocent women was justified. Are we deadass right now sir. 

We are leaving Neverseen territory because I just had to bring up how this directly parallels Livvy’s sob story in Nightfall: 

“It was horrifying,” Livvy agreed. “Needles and blood and beeping machines leaking radiation. I even saw someone die.” She wiped her eyes. “And the worst part was, I could’ve saved him with one elixir. In fact, I could’ve cured the whole hospital in a few hours. But I didn’t have any medicine with me because I hadn’t gone there to give. I’d gone there to take. I thought I couldn’t be any more disgusted with myself. But as I was trying to leave, I stumbled into the children’s wing, and . . . I’ll spare you the nightmares.” [Nightfall, Ch.13]

Except the key difference between evil Forkman and a decent-enough person is that Livvy specifically states that she could have helped if she had medicine on her. Her visit was spontaneous, and she at the time was oblivious to the humans’ medical problems. She didn’t know she could have saved lives that day.

Meanwhile, Forkle worked in a clinic for God knows how long and had not one but “hundreds” of opportunities to help his patients yet repeatedly decided not to break the unjust, arbitrary laws set by the Council centuries earlier because… nothing. He had no good excuse.

I just know there was a way he could have helped prevent these deeply traumatic miscarriages without causing “chaos” or whatever. He just didn’t want to because you cannot convince me that Forkle gives a flying fuck about humans.

Which is an insane statement to make about the man who designed an entire project around building a super-elf who could help humans and elves coexist again. (Except if you think about it, the Black Swan could have done way more for the humans in the 13+ years it took to get Project Moonlark to this stage than Sophie—seeing from her current trajectory—ever will.) 

Then you have, again, the fact that the Black Swan doesn’t have any Shades or Pyrokinetics until Sophie and friends' arrival. They also admit—again, in Nightfall, not Neverseen—that they did everything in their power so that Sophie never triggers Pyrokinesy as an ability. 

For a series that argues that “abilities aren’t everything”, the “good guys” sure are obsessed with abilities. Say what you will about the Neverseens, but they’re not Pyrophobic. Which is why they keep winning 👍

The following quotes show two missed opportunities in Neverseen for the teenagers (specifically Sophie's)Pyrophobia to be called out: 

"Do they have any Pyrokinetics?" Biana asked. "I hope not," Sophie said. [Neverseen, Ch.4]

"Is there a Pyrokinetic here?" Sophie asked. "Two," Granite said. Sophie hoped her path to Prentice kept her far away. [Neverseen, Ch.28]

In my opinion, Pyrokinesy is the most mistreated ability in the series both by the characters and the overall framing of the narrative, which completely contradicts the message of the story.

Are we supposed to judge people based on things they have absolutely zero control over, yes or no? Well, according to Auntie Shannon, we shouldn’t judge people ever… unless they’re Pyrokinetics, in which case, go right ahead. These people are all evil except for super snowflake special Marella who is the only good one. “I’m not Pyrophobic because I know a Pyrokinetic” ahhh Black Swan. 

And when you think it’s over, the evil Forkman—spokesperson of the Collective and most powerful leader of the Black Swan to the point that he’s the one vouching for them in the Peace Summit and all that—somehow finds a way to get worse. Because this is how he speaks about the Waywards (i.e. children between the ages 11-19): 

"Exilium is not so much a school as it is an institution," Mr. Forkle warned. "It exists for the Unworthy—the hopeless cases that must be kept in line. [...]" [Neverseen, Ch.39]

First of all, he’s one of the 4 people in this book who uses the U-word. The other 3 being Councillor Alina (the Collective = the Council pipeline just keeps getting deeper), Della Vacker and Coach Rohanna.

All 3 of these women have a background that explains why they would say such dehumanising things about the Waywards. For Alina and Rohanna, it’s literally part of their job to see the Waywards as less-than in order to enforce the inhumane policies on them. As for Della… she’s a Vacker. Of course she’s anti-Wayward-pilled. She’s a noble. She’s a Council dickrider.

You know who doesn’t have any business being so dehumanising of Waywards? The fucking Black Swan. Who are supposed to be this fucking rebellion group fighting for fucking equality. Equality for whom you may ask, because at this point I think we have no better upholder of the status quo than these poorly dressed dinguses. 

And last but not least, you cannot convince me that Black Swan cares about Talentless people. Yes, I argued previously that Timkin is treated better than the gnomes and dwarves, but that’s just because the gnomes and dwarves are treated as if they didn’t exist and Timkin’s existence is acknowledged… bare ass minimum. 

Timkin is their only Talentless recruit and they gave him no decision-making power, no opportunities to give his input (Timkin complains about child endangerment and not briefing the kids about the Exile plan before they’re in Exile, both of which are INCREDIBLY VALID CONCERNS):

"And last time you had permission to be there," Coiffe reminded her. "Do you really think you can walk in the main entrance?" "No. But it's hard to know what's going on when no one's told us the plan," she snapped. "That was not my decision." [Neverseen, Ch.26]

He also is given only one (1) mission: to guide the kids from Alluveterre to a random forest and leave them to wait for the actual mission to begin. A mission which he understandably hates and finds pointless:

"My involvement with the Black Swan is usually more hands off. But today I must play babysitter, [...]" [Neverseen, Ch.26]

You compare it to Cassius—whose sole presence in this organisation shows that the Black Swan doesn’t give a flying fuck about making Keefe feel safe and welcome—and suddenly you can see that the Black Swan has a serious problem with Talentless people.

Because Cassius is given multiple missions throughout the series, including a mission in Stellarlune that anyone else could have taken and that did not require any of his skills, much less his ability. Which was to monitor the treaty negotiations with the trolls. Which I have no idea how Cassius would even have access to but that’s a Stellarlune rant so… we’ll leave it at that.

Kesler Dizznee is actually the only Talentless person that the Black Swan mentions aside from Timkin. It’s not like Talentless characters are roaming the streets of this series anyways but if there was any group that should have had more Talentless members, it was the Black Swan.

Aaaaaaand… we’re going to stop there. 

Look, there’s nothing inherently wrong with the Collective being eerily similar to the Council. Honestly, it could have been a fascinating concept to explore, to show that the holier-than-thou attitude of the Collective is actually pure bullfuckery and Sophie could’ve called them out on that (similarly to how Snow and Coin are the same breed of evil in Mockingjay).

My gripe with Shannon just hitting copy and paste when creating the Collective is that she isn’t being deliberate about it. All these parallels between the Collective and Council are purely coincidental. They exist because Shannon was being unbelievably lazy when creating the Black Swan. 

She never tries to add any nuance to her “politics”, to make Sophie just as ashamed of Forkle as Keefe is ashamed of Gisela or Fitz is (allegedly) ashamed of the Vacker Legacy. Because she only cares about the aesthetic of a political fantasy, trying to recreate the lightning of The Hunger Games without actually committing to any sort of political ideology. 

And before the  “it’s not that deep” or “it’s just a middle grade series” crowd comes for me, I just want to make it clear that I’m not asking Shannon to write politics in her books. No one was asking her to leave the power fantasy for young girls with sparkly castles and flying unicorns—and no one was asking her to write social commentary about a dystopic utopia. She did this to herself. 

The moment Sophie and friends were ‘conscripted’ into a rebel group was the moment KotLC swapped genres, and the moment our expectations were allowed to shift from a simple, wish-fulfillment middle grade to a political middle grade. 

And since Shannon wanted to pretend that she was going somewhere “deep” with Neverseen, then it’s totally fair of me to expect her to go beyond surface-level disguises and codenames and secrets. And it's totally fair criticism of me to be upset that the political fantasy is refusing to be political about anything.

And you know what Shannon. If you’re not going to play with the political themes in your story, then PASS THE GODDAMN CONTROLLER (to Suzanne Collins). AND SHUT UP.

Yeah I’m pissed. I despise cardboard politics.

2// World’s Sorriest Bunch of Nobodies

Another issue with the telepathic debate in Chapter 9 is that it robbed the Collective members of a much needed first impression. Because, from their introduction scene? Yeah, you cannot consider Blur, Wraith or Squall or even Granite to be actual characters. And they still aren’t, to be completely honest. 

"We believe you," Mr. Forkle eventually said. "And are willing to give this arrangement a try. You can swear fealty tonight with the others." [Neverseen, Ch. 9]

Squeezing an entire debate in the word “eventually” implies the characters who participated in this debate had no opinions and arguments that mattered enough to be mentioned to the readers.

And let’s just exercise our right to critical thinking for two seconds: what, exactly, does it signal to your readers if you say that your new characters’ opinions don’t matter? Damn right: that the characters themselves don’t matter. 

At this point I’m going to ask, why have a Collective at all? Was it absolutely necessary for Wraith, Blur and Squall to be a part of it? Couldn’t you have done without Granite and Forkle? The Collective better not have been just to add secret identities and cheap mysteries, or I swear—

For further proof of “the Collective members hardly count as characters”, I once went looking for how many times each (confirmed) member of the Black Swan gets mentioned in Neverseen: 

→ Sophie/Moonlark: 1,855 mentions 

→ Keefe: 823 mentions 

→ Fitz: 577 mentions 

→ Forkle/Leto/Astin: 572 mentions

→ Dex: 394 mentions 

→ Biana: 362 mentions 

→ Della: 189 mentions 

→ Granite/Tiergan: 158 mentions

→ Prentice: 96 mentions 

→ Coiffe/Timkin: 46 mentions 

→ Blur: 39 mentions  

→ Physic: 37 mentions 

→ Squall/Juline: 23 mentions 

→ Wraith: 20 mentions 

→ Jolie: 12 mentions 

→ The Black Swan’s Technopath (Tinker): 1 mention

(I’m not counting Cadence, Tam and Linh who were not part of the Black Swan in that book). 

Forkle is the 4th most mentioned character in Neverseen, after Sophie, Keefe, and Fitz (the latter with only 5 more mentions than Forkle, which is insane work). 

If we went by mentions alone, Forkle deserved to be on Neverseen’s cover far more than Biana. (Technically so did Fitz but shhh). Let that sink in. 

Meanwhile, Squall and Wraith are amongst the least mentioned characters, only beating gnomes like Sior or Amisi by a very small margin.

In fact, Ruy—who only appears in ONE scene—gets more mentions than half of the Collective. And the Boobrie dude gets almost as many mentions as Wraith (15). Alden, who’s not even there for 99% of the book, gets mentioned a striking 91 times—so more than Blur, Squall and Wraith combined. Calla, who is refused a rightful place in the Collective and a Black Swan pendant, is mentioned 317 times.

To me, it’s astounding how little Shannon seems to care about the Collective, which further shows she didn’t put much thought into her politics at all. Even though she’s trying so, so hard to make you believe that she did. 

I mean those guys are rebels for fuck’s sake. They can’t be blank characters that are reduced to silly names and disguises, they NEED proper motives and opinions. Otherwise you’re just needlessly oversaturating your book with inconsequential characters.

Clearly, Squall, Wraith and Blur were mere afterthoughts, when characters like Timkin and Livvy easily sweep in and steal the stage. Honestly, they deserved to be part of the Collective far more than the nobodies with useless disguises who won’t be missed. I mean this is what she wrote as the Collective’s FIRST LINES: 

(Squall) "I know the titles might seem strange, but we've found it's easier to remember code names when they match the disguise." (Wraith) "Welcome to Alluveterre." (Granite) "We're grateful to have all of you here—including you, Ms. Vacker." (Blur) "The Neverseen are not a pressing threat at the moment."

What the hell does this say about their characters exactly?

Squall is used as an exposition machine—which is a terrible way to introduce your character, by the way, unless what they’re exposing is obviously biased and wrong. 

Wraith says “Welcome to Alluveterre” as if these kids haven’t been there for at least two to three hours already. Keep up.

Granite is “grateful” that the universe brought him five new kids to exploit. And he talks just like Forkle. Seriously, what’s with the “Ms. Vacker”?? #NotMyTiergan

Blur is an idiot who thinks the Neverseen are “not a pressing threat” even though they very much were. Honestly, his first line reveals more about his character than the others. Still sucks though. 

Imagine for a second that the Collective didn’t have telepathic debates.

Imagine if we’d seen each of the members’ differing stances on Della.

Imagine if those stances were windows to how they contribute to most debates in the future. Yes, it would’ve required to give them more page time and slow down the pacing, but even a tiny bit of characterisation could’ve done wonders to the story and paid off later on: 

– Squall could’ve been the pragmatic one, weighing the perks and losses of having Della join the order. 

– Wraith could’ve been more pessimistic, expecting Della to be a burden to the Black Swan, to not have what it takes to join a rebellion. 

– Meanwhile Blur could’ve headbutted with Wraith, optimistically arguing that a noblewoman joining their organisation opens the door for many others to follow her lead—and the more, the merrier, right? 

– Finally we could’ve had Granite as the paranoid one, convinced that Della has ulterior motives, that she’s a spy sent by the Council/Alden and that she should subject herself to a mind-reading if she wishes to stay in Alluveterre. 

And just like that you would’ve had the opportunity for the Collective to be effectively characterised, as well as for Della to truly make a case for herself, to show badass skills like persuasion and de-escalation and networking. Instead of just having her vanish (ha, see what I did there) into thin air the second the discussion no longer revolves around pretty dresses.

I’m sorry but Coiffe easily puts all of these losers to shame. Why is his introduction scene so much more colourful? 

"Argh—I swear I've picked up ichrites in this infernal fur." "Ichrites?" Sophie asked. "A type of insect that feeds on unicorn blood." He leaned against the post of the gazebo, rubbing his back like a bear scratching on a tree. [Neverseen, Ch. 25]

Coiffe’s introduction scene differs from the Collective’s in critical ways: 

Firstly, he’s allowed a whole scene to himself (almost as if he was an important character!) A whole scene where the gang stumbles upon him and reacts to his costume and ridiculous codename. The Collective didn’t get that, because their introductions, codenames and disguises were all packed in 1-2 pages, their descriptions piggy-backing each other without letting room for readers to breathe. 

Secondly, Coiffe distinguishes himself from the rest of the Black Swan members we’ve met because he doesn’t take his codename seriously and profoundly dislikes wearing his disguise. That’s the key thing about this guy: he’s not entirely “all-in” with the Black Swan, he actually has his minor disagreements with them—which I’m certain was Shannon’s way of making him dislikeable. But to me a contrarian character is far more likeable than no character at all. Coiffe disagrees with the concept of kids doing dangerous missions, and this goes hand in hand with Timkin’s statement later on (Ch. 63): “Unlike others in the Black Swan, I do not endanger children. Especially my children.” 

Last and most importantly, Coiffe’s introduction scene immediately gives out clues to his real identity. Because Shannon actually knew who it was going to be from the get go. We have not so subtle clues like Sophie instantaneously deciding that she and Coiffe aren’t “going to be friends”, or Coiffe saying Kesler has nothing better to do in his life than making Furry potions (based asf). But perhaps my favourite clue is when Coiffe has this tiny exposition dump about ichrites which are specifically pests affecting unicorns. You know. Because caring for unicorns is his job. As Timkin.

I tried mighty hard, yet couldn’t find any clue to Squall, Wraith, Blur (or even Granite)’s real identities in their introduction scene. 

I know I’m fixating way too much on this but there is nothing more aggravating than useless and boring characters. Shannon made a fatal mistake by introducing the Collective as a bulk rather than as individual people. She keeps making this specific mistake with the Council too—not realising that putting all 12 Councillors in a room and describing their appearance is not going to do justice to any of them. 

There’s a reason why Oralie, Kenric, Bronte, Emery, Alina and Terik are the only Councillors who stand out: they were introduced apart from the Council. They get to have their own spotlight. Same reason why the Neverseens are the most interesting group: most members get to have their individual introduction scenes. Their own personalities and skills and backstories. Their own time to shine. 

This is the ABC of character writing. I can't believe Shannon didn’t, like, understand this by the time she wrote Neverseen...

3// Useless Disguises

I had this rant about Granite (as a secret identity) bringing nothing to the table in the Cognate section. I now want to expand this point to the Collective and Black Swan as a whole.

The big idea with disguises and secret identities is that they allow for interactions that would not have been possible with a single identity. Think Miraculous and the love square and how every ship dynamic is slightly different because of the dual identities. I don't even like Miraculous but that's something they understood better than Shannon.

Let's just bring back the example of Granite/Tiergan. In an alternate universe where Neverseen is a good book, Fitz would've reacted differently to Granite's criticisms than he used to with Tiergan’s. Since Tiergan has history with Alden, Fitz would've been able to shield himself from most of Tiergan's critics by dismissing them as Tiergan just being a Vacker hater. But with Granite, it would've been a whole other can of worms. 

"[...]—while you're an incredibly talented Telepath—your skills simply do not match Sophie's." Sophie cringed, wondering if the criticism would bother Fitz. But he grinned at her and said, "Yeah, she makes us all look bad." "She does indeed," Granite agreed, his face cracking further as he smiled. [Neverseen, Ch.13]

From Fitz's POV, this stranger has no reason to lie to him or be a hater. So Fitz would be much more butthurt by Granite's harsh words than he would've ever been with Tiergan's. It could’ve also created dramatic irony, with Fitz complaining that it didn’t mean much when Tiergan criticised his skills because Tiergan hated his father’s guts, but Granite had no reason to be mean to him… and then readers would’ve reread this book and been like: this is gold. 

Then you have Squall, Dex's mother for fuck’s sake, who gets 8 lines in this entire book, 6 of which could've been spoken by anyone else in the Collective because that's how impersonal she sounds:

"Della," she corrected. "Surely if I have to call you those crazy code words, you can call me by my familiar name." Squall's face crackled as she smiled. "Della it is." [Neverseen, Ch.9]

"He's right," Squall agreed. "And I'm sorry, but I must get back or someone will notice I'm missing." She removed a frosted purple-black crystal from her crackly cloak and leaped away in a flurry of snow. [Neverseen, Ch.9]

"You aren't actually considering staging an ambush?" Granite said when Mr. Forkle stroked his chin. "There's no time to prepare," Squall added. [Neverseen, Ch.19]

With Squall being revealed as Juline occurring mid-Lodestar, there was no time to properly set up an interesting relationship between Squall and Dex that could've transcended the mother-son dynamic. Or even develop a potential aunt-niece relationship between Squall and Sophie.

There was no time to properly set up the ‘Squall’ part of Juline’s identity, because Shannon has this thing where, the minute the secret identity is revealed, they are usually "merged" into one (see: Leto losing his Loki-esque personality the second he was revealed to be a Mr. Forkle alias). 

Well, no, actually. It's not that there was no time. There was plenty of time. Plenty of scenes where Squall could’ve been added in a meaningful way—to name a few: when the Black Swan praises Dex’s skills as a Technopath (Ch.14), or when Dex believes he “killed Wonderboy” (Ch.31), or when Edaline shows up and Dex gets all teared up because he misses his own mother and Edaline looks so much like her (Ch.36).

Where in the world was Squall in all of these scenes?? Not here, that's for sure.

You cannot convince me that Shannon knew Squall was Juline in Neverseen; there is just no way she would’ve passed on opportunities like these. Especially when you compare it to Coiffe, who had plenty of foreshadowing for his true identity despite being hierarchically less important than Squall and also only appearing in one (1) scene. 

Next are Wraith and Blur... and yes, I'm grouping them into one paragraph because their characters are just that bland. Their identities haven't been revealed, and yet, despite spending Neverseen to Stellarlune in disguises, we haven't learned a single interesting fact about them aside from their abilities. They don’t even have a personality, unless you consider Blur being an idiot to be a character trait. Which I don’t, because everyone in KotLC is an idiot. 

Yes, people theorise that Blur might be Jensi's brother. It's not a theory at this point, it's half-canon, Shannon's just taking her sweet time... or delaying it because Blur never was that important to begin with. All of this to say: we can't really explore Wraith and Blur's dynamics and how they differ from their real identities, because we don't know their real identities. 

I could talk about Physic, but the same point applies to her than to Blur and Wraith. Livvy is beautiful (what do you mean she has purple jewellery on her skin?? peak character design choice) and I wish she was more developed, but it's unfortunately not the case.

Again, if we saw Physic interacting at least once with a person Livvy’s very close to (that is, Quinlin and no one else because misogyny), and their dynamic was completely different, that could've been interesting. Potentially. And no, Biana and Della do not count—their relationship to Livvy was established post-reveal to gaslight readers into thinking the reveal is more significant than it actually was (i.e., not significant at all).

Livvy doesn't have any connections to the main cast, aside from Sophie who doesn't remember her, and Della and Biana whom she was never that close with, so her whole "slipping up and using [her] real name" and her having to face Mr. Forkle's "wrath" if she used her real name (Ch.31) literally had no substance behind it whatsoever.

I don't know why Shannon included those lines when we readers didn’t know who Livvy was until her creation in Nightfall? And never even got a clue of her existence before her being Physic was revealed? Was it just to edge us? Or was Physic supposed to be someone else? 

But the worst offender is by far Coiffe. Because he also had the most potential for an interesting disparity in dynamics—as can be seen by the amount of mentions he gets, compared to his own leaders. Because Sophie, no matter how much Shannon will try to gaslight you, is not that open or that trusting or that forgiving. Unless this is about Keefe in which case yes she is, very much to a fault. 

She can be especially close-minded and stubborn and uncompassionate when it comes to the Hekses, even with Timkin, whom she should have the least feud with. Except she hates Timkin so damn much than when Granite tells her she might come to understand why he is the way he is a little more when going to Exilium, she just "highly doubts that" and moves on, never to think back to this possibility ever again. Why do we not get any hindsight from Sophie when she realises how “awful” Exilium is (it’s not, but that’s a rant for another time)? Why does she not think to herself: good for Timkin that he managed to come back to the Lost Cities? 

We were robbed of Coiffe as a potential “remember who the real enemy is” type of character. Not just for Sophie, but Dex too, who immediately hates Coiffe as if he had X-ray vision and could see Timkin under all that fur. 

"The Black Swan needs a better screening process for their helpers," Dex decided. [Neverseen, Ch. 26]

Also, and this is just me being shallow and superficial, but can we talk about how ugly those disguises are? And how impractical they look? Tell me why you’re going to drag Ice Queen and Talking Asphalt to a mission that requires stealth and running fast if caught. I think Livvy really was onto something when she just decided to put on a Mardi-Gras style mask and call it a day. That’s quick and easy to take/take-off, does the secret-identity deed just fine, and has the advantage of not making you look fucking ridiculous. 

I can’t believe Squall unironically thinks their disguises will make people take them more seriously: 

“Brave words coming from a talking rock,” Councillor Alina said. “Do you honestly expect us to take you seriously in those disguises?” “We do indeed,” Squall said, tilting her frozen head. [Neverseen, Ch.29]

Alina ate them up. She is absolutely correct and don’t let misogyny make you believe otherwise for one second. Because how in the world do you want to be taken seriously when y'all are walking around looking like THIS:

4// What are they teaching these kids . . . 

Sophie studied each of the Councillors, realizing how little she knew about many of them. She didn’t even know most of their names, much less their special abilities. But it seemed safe to assume they were all absurdly powerful. [Neverseen, Ch.29]

It’s at this very moment that I knew the Black Swan was the most useless organisation to have ever damned this series (and believe me, the competition was TOUGH).

Because how in the world do you—in a book centered around tight control over knowledge—decide to not inform 5 of your main operatives (which you had prospected to deploy on this mission for 19 days) about the most basic stuff such as THEIR OPPONENTS’ ABILITIES?

It gets worse than that: Sophie doesn’t even know their NAMES. YEAH. 

Let’s talk about the slowest part of Neverseen’s first 25%, the main reason I dropped 1/3 of my rereadings before even making it to Exillium: the Black Swan’s “training”. 

Because it sucks. 

“We’re working on a plan,” Granite said. “And it’s going to take everyone’s help. Biana—you’ll need to be able to hold your vanish far longer than you currently can. Dex—we managed to get our hands on one of the bolts used on the cells. We’ll need you to master opening it quickly and silently. Sophie and Fitz—we’ll need your minds at their absolute strongest. So we’ve prepared notebooks with exercises to further your Cognate training. And Keefe—we have several Empathy books we need you to familiarize yourself with.” [Neverseen, Ch.11] 

At face-value, this training plan looks decent, right? I mean, except for (poor) Keefe who has the most useless ability and thus the most useless “assignment”, it sounds like a good-enough idea to train the Vanisher to stay invisible for longer periods or for the Technopath to know how to pick lofaster.

But then you arrive at the actual Prentice rescue—which is briefed to the kids literally at the doorstep of Exile when there is no return possible and consent is murky at best—and you realise this entire training was fuck-all.

“The rest of you will be in charge of causing as much chaos as you can generate. Squall, Blur, and Mr. Sencen will head to the most unruly residents. Between your various abilities, you should be able to get them sufficiently riled up. Just be sure to stay on the move so the dwarves don’t catch you.” [Neverseen, Ch.27]

→ So Keefe, who was told to familiarise himself with “several Empathy books” for 19 days, ends up being given a mission that requires zero (0) Empathy. I’m pretty sure he was not included in the “between your various abilities” because how the hell is an Empath going to get anyone “riled up”?

“Meanwhile, I’ll take Della and Biana,” Wraith said, “and we’ll head for the main entrance. We want to look like we’re fleeing, so they divert other patrols to prevent our escape.” “Does that mean we shouldn’t vanish as we run?” Biana asked. “Only intermittently,” Wraith said. “We need to ensure they follow us—but also not give away that it’s our intention. And once we reach the Room Where Chances Are Lost, we’ll vanish completely and hold for Mr. Forkle’s signal." [Neverseen, Ch.27]

→ Biana, who has been told that she needs to vanish for “far longer than she currently can” ends up being told that her mission requires intermittent vanishing. Something that is literally INNATE.

Okay, the second half of her mission (which I doubt they got to do since their plan was ass) is to vanish completely but still, I think her training was not appropriate to the mission at all. And I’m not sure how vanishing would help them escape from dwarves. You know. The species that notoriously relies on their sight the least. 

“Our hope is that all of your efforts will create enough of a distraction for Sophie to lead the rest of us to Prentice. Mr. Dizznee will then be in charge of opening his cell, and Granite and I will tend to Prentice and signal when we’re ready to leave.” [Neverseen, Ch.27]

→ Sophie’s mission is to lead everyone else to Prentice, however her training during those 19 days consisted of 1) long-distance telepathy (Silveny), 2) animal telepathy (Silveny again), and 3) TRUST EXERCISES with Fitz. Where, pray tell, do you see “singling one person’s thoughts among 5111 other people.”

And the sheer fact that they have Sophie do this while completely unprepared and untrained is insanity. Arguably child abuse. Sure, Sophie is the most powerful Telepath to have ever telepathed, but she has never accomplished a feat anywhere this dramatic before.

It breaks the power-scaling in a manner I do not believe Shannon realised, and it’s not brought up as that much of a big deal nor as a power Sophie could perhaps hone later on (she could find the Neverseen in a city if the Black Swan cared enough to train her in this skill). 

You know what could’ve been better, more appropriate training? Granite taking Sophie to the Forbidden Cities to train her in tracking down specific people in crowded places. Yeah. 

→ Dex is actually the only one whose training matched the mission he was assigned. I’m just annoyed that in all of the scenes leading up to the Prentice jail-break, all we see Dex do is working on the Twiggler, rather than the Exile locks like the Black Swan initially said (and this is fully on the Black Swan for distracting him with this side project of theirs). 

In the end, Dex’s training was useless since the Council completely changed the security measures last minute which apparently the Black Swan had not anticipated. I’m not even sure how they got the sample for the locks but whatever. 

“What about me?” Fitz asked. “It doesn’t sound like I’m doing anything.” Dex laughed at that, but fell silent when Granite said, “You’re here for Sophie. She will need someone to lean on, to keep her calm and boost her strength while she tackles our most difficult task.” [Neverseen, Ch.27]

→ Fitz was probably done the most dirty out of all of them. I just know Shannon needed him to be in Exile so she can have the arthropleura incident happen to him (though why she needed Fitz to be impaled by a giant bug, that, I cannot tell) but why lie to him like that?

Granite told Fitz that the Black Swan was going to need his mind “at [its] absolute strongest.” Now I’m no genius or anything, but if someone told me that, I would assume they were… going to use my mind powers. I don’t know. Just a… just a theory I guess. 

But no. Fitz is limited to being Sophie’s personal cheerleader, which he almost fails at since, in my humble opinion as the Neverseen rereader, his little Descryer anecdote wasn’t actually comforting as much as the Sophie glaze that came right at the end of it (“And you’re a thousand times more talented than I am, Sophie. I know you can do this.”)

Maybe if you knew his role was going to be Sophie’s cheerleader, you could, I don’t know, warn him in advance? So he can be good at his only job and not jeopardise the mission because he can’t come up with a good enough story on the spot? 

Just wanna add that Fitz’s most useful contribution in the Prentice jail-break mission is no thanks to the Black Swan’s “training” but due to Fitz self-teaching himself a niche telepathy skill in his free time: 

“Is that better?” he asked, his hands shaking as he lowered them. Sophie nodded. “What did you just do?” “He shared his mental energy,” Mr. Forkle said. “Impressive, Mr. Vacker.” Fitz blushed. “I’ve been practicing.” [Neverseen, Ch.28]

Would it have killed Shannon to make the Black Swan look competent for even 5 seconds? Instead of Fitz saying “I’ve been practicing” he could’ve said something along the lines of “You/Granite taught me well” to show that the Black Swan had anticipated (and prepared for) their dear Moonlark running out of mental energy as they make her do the most tiring task they’ve ever asked of her yet. 

And it is so ridiculous that the Black Swan’s “in-depth training” which specifically aimed to “prepare [them] to rescue Prentice” (their words, not mine) was so insufficient that Fitz had to find the time to self-teach himself the only skill that was actually required of him for the mission. Purely coincidentally, by the way. 

I cannot emphasise how much of a farce this entire “training arc” is. It’s like Shannon didn’t reread. 

What I can do though is make a list of everything the Black Swan could’ve taught these children in 19 days instead of useless hat tricks that are not tailored to the mission at all: 

The Councillors’ individual skills and abilities: to come back to the first quote of this section, it’s insane to me that Sophie so daringly defied the Council without knowing the first thing about 90% of its members. It shouldn’t have been the case and I can’t believe neither she nor the Black Swan attempted to correct this. Not before the mission. Not after. Never.  

The dwarves’ strengths and weaknesses: the Black Swan hires dwarves, ja? Well, these dwarves could’ve taught Sophie and friends what they should expect from the Exile guards instead of having the Vanisher believe she’s safe from the only species that doesn’t rely on their eyes to see. 

Darkness vision: seems obvious since they’re going, you know, underground. I was incredibly annoyed when Dex whined about wanting another Balefire pendant and the Black Swan told him they didn’t want to disturb the roots’ rest. Like, brochacho, there’s a skill for that (I’m shocked to hear that Kesler didn’t train his kids in seeing in the dark?) which the Black Swan could’ve taught these children (and themselves) and not require Balefire at all. And darkness vision could've allowed them to seize advantage of the fact that the Council most likely does not train in those skills as they are underrated. Imagine a chase scene through Exile’s tunnels in complete darkness. Oh, the possibilities. 

The Black Swan cypher runes: why were none of these kids nor Della (save for Sophie who knows these instinctively) trained in learning the code of the secret organisation they’ve just joined? Almost as if the Black Swan cypher runes are useless nonsense. This wouldn’t have been useful in Exile but it would’ve made sense and hey, secret codes are cool, okay? 

5// Pointless Games and Riddles 

Whilst writing Neverseen, Shannon was confronted with a new, terrifying question: how do you make the mysterious, work-from-the-shadows organisation maintain its enigma factor when your main character literally lives with them? 

Her answer to that dilemma was very concise, very simple: mysterious people write riddles and quote proverbs that were written by wiser people than them.

And you know what. Fair enough. It could’ve done the trick if the riddles weren’t so utterly pointless and a massive waste of time for every party involved, and if the wisdoms quoted were the tiniest bit relevant to the troubles at hand. But if I’m writing this rant, it’s because they obviously didn’t do the trick. At all.

Thankfully for everyone (me), the Black Swan wasn’t as enigmatic as the previous books. There are actually only two (2) instances of them writing riddles in this book… which is even worse because how do you fail so embarrassingly at being smart when you’ve only got two attempts at not being dumb. I’m telling y’all the Black Swan can’t be smart to save their lives. 

The first is the bad piece of poetry that’s trying very hard to pass as instructions to navigate Florence:

Take the Path of the Privileged Past eyes that watch eternal, and blood turned precious. Seek the tower that would not yield for the next steps of your journey.

[Neverseen, Ch.2]

For the people who haven’t revisited this cursed book in a while, here are the answers to this bunch of literary nonsense: 

“Path of the Privileged”: Vasari’s Corridor 

“Eyes that watch eternal”: Cosimo’s eyes 

“Blood turned precious”: butchers were replaced by gold shops because the Medicis didn’t like the smell of blood

“The tower that would not yield”: the Manellis’ tower that they didn’t let Vasari destroy 

Now if this was a fun, low-stake game and if Sophie and friends were normal teenagers on a nice field trip to Florence, this non-rhyming riddle would’ve been more than appropriate. But it isn’t. And they aren’t. 

They’re on the run from the government, and are looking for the fastest way to get themselves to safety. They literally skipped a night of sleep and breakfast for this shit. The Black Swan heard all of that loud and clear and thought that having them look for which window matches Sophie’s memories would be worth everyone’s time. 

Then Mr. Forkle has the NERVE to say this: 

“You kids took your sweet time getting here!” [Neverseen, Ch.4]

Bro—WHOSE BLOODY FAULT IS THAT?!? God forbid these children take a gelato break after you’ve made them wake up at the ass crack of dawn to try to decipher your low-quality riddle whose sole purpose was to pat your own back?? 

Seriously, Neverseen probably has the dumbest opening to any kotlc book because tell me the purpose of this Florence trip. I wouldn’t have minded it if it was some last minute stop to try to shake the Council off their tracks but it isn’t. The Florence trip (as well as the riddle, and Sophie’s plethora of fun facts about the city which are directly quoted out of the Vasari Corridor Wikipedia page—yes, I checked) was apparently planned out years in advance. 

“Is that what you think it was?” Mr. Forkle asked. “Luck?” Sophie sighed. “Exactly how many weird memories have you given me?” “As many as you’ll need.” “How can you possibly know that?” Fitz asked. “Very careful planning.” [Neverseen, Ch.5]

This is such BULLSHIT. What this is showing isn’t that the Black Swan is very good at planning, but that they use Sophie’s memory carelessly to store anything and everything they have a hunch could be useful (Stellarlune confirms this).

Like, no matter how you want to look at it, Sophie memorising all of these facts about Vasari’s Corridor is not a flex at all and will never (and I really mean never) bring anything to the Moonlark Project… whatever the fuck that even is. 

And the reason I’m so frustrated with this plotline is that it was such an easy fix. Such. an. easy. fix.

It’s all about which facts Sophie memorised, and what themes they were all pointing at. What they were attempting to warn her about. Because Florence is a city famous for its plagues. Terrible ones. Terribly handled ones, which resulted in many, too many, unnecessary deaths.

For fuck’s sake, there are entire research papers written about how deadly Florence plagues during Renaissance Italy were—research papers which would be far more useful for Sophie to memorise than easily accessible Wikipedia pages. 

But no, the Black Swan, for all their boasting about how good they are at planning and how mYsTeRiOuS they are, actually don’t care about teaching the kids valuable lessons… which links to my previous section, but also the second, even stupider riddle/game they put them through: 

The pendants (ominous music plays)

First of all, the Black Swan pendants are a SCAM. This is revealed to us in their introduction scene, with Calla revealing this to Sophie: 

"That's one of the Black Swan's mysterteries. But you are their heir. Your spot is reserved. All you have to do is accept it." [Neverseen, Ch.12]

The concept of an “heir” was an instant red flag for me and I cannot believe Sophie wasn’t immediately alarmed by the idea that her test was most likely rigged for her to succeed regardless of how she does.

The ONLY TIME the unfairness of this special treatment is brought up is in a fuckass DELETED SCENE. I kid you not:

"You are our heir,” Granite added. “Entrance to the order is your right."  "That’s not to imply that you have no choice in the matter,” Wraith added quickly. “You can still choose to walk away if you’d like,” Blur finished.  Sophie wasn’t going anywhere.  But she didn’t want special treatment, either.  “If you don’t mind,” she said, “I’d like to take the test with my friends." [Neverseen, 4th Deleted Scene]

And I cannot believe she didn’t tell… anyone? Neither in this deleted scene nor in the actual book does Sophie think about bringing up that the test was rigged in her favour... meaning it could have easily been rigged against the others. And in both the deleted scene and the actual book, Sophie thinks that just taking the test like the others erase the fact that she still gets special treatment. Whether she succeeds or not, she gets in the Black Swan. Her friends didn't have an equal chance and she doesn't bring it up for no good reason.

Worse, in the next chapter she’s all proud like “yeah, I got it on the first try” and everyone else is just “honestly not surprised” even though it was through NO MERIT OF HER OWN. 

Agency WHERE. 

Choice WHERE. 

I refuse to believe that “I will do everything in my power to help my world” and how much they “believe” in it and are able to “uphold” this promise when they pronounce it even matters. It’s just not possible.

Because how does a lifeless, mindless gadget measure the sincerity of anything, exactly? Was it actually a recording device, with the Collective on the other line, giggling and shushing each other before pressing the button after x amount of trials? Like… how? Just. How. 

If the test was rigged in favour of Sophie then we should really be asking ourselves why Keefe had more tries than everyone else. Did the Black Swan decide he needed more resistance than his friends? Did they want to give him some kind of ego check? 

That’s one of the very rare times where Keefe actually deserved a mini-consolation scene, just a quick “oh and by the way they probably pre-determined how many tries we’ll have to do before getting it to open so don’t think about it too much” from Sophie would’ve done wonders for this guy’s self-esteem. 

Again, I’m frustrated because the concept of the test being rigged was fascinating but not explored, since Shannon refuses to make the Black Swan be the bad guys even though they clearly are. 

I designed an alternative because I will never uphold complaining without offering a solution: 

Instead of only swearing an oath to a black box hoping it can hear you, there could have been a "record" button that you have to press each time you pronounce the oath. Instead of the Black Swan judging the “sincerity” of the oath, this could have been a test of resilience, by programming the box to only open after x amount of presses. This could’ve been 10, 20, 50, or even 100 times. 

Then, because that’s where the fun of a riddle is, you could have characterised the main gang’s various reactions to it, instead of arbitrarily deciding that Fitz would get it right on the 2nd trial and Biana and Dex on the 3rd. How each of the main characters handled this puzzle could’ve been great to show who they are as people and where their different strengths lie: 

Sophie would’ve stubbornly pressed the button again and again, swearing the oath over and over until she gets it to open.

Fitz would’ve lost patience and started spamming the button believing it didn’t work, quickly working his way through the required number of button presses.

Dex would’ve believed the box was malfunctioning and broken it down to understand how it works, figured the trick after obtaining the pendant, and laughed at how simple the mechanism was all along. 

Biana would’ve sneaked out of her room to ask the others how they handled it, learning either from Dex or Fitz what the trick was.

Keefe would’ve given up, believing that the Black Swan must not think him “sincere” enough—or not believing himself to be sincere enough.

Della… we don’t care about Della. She’s not a main character. Sorry.

And if you thought the pendants’ test being rigged was the worst thing about them well. You would be wrong. It’s only the tip of the stupidity iceberg.

If we zoom in a bit more, we get the little messages that Sophie and friends each received and it’s just…

Ugh.

You cannot convince me they actually meant those stupid messages to “train [their] minds to think critically” (Ch.13). Critically where. Someone needs to follow their own advice because hellloooow??? The call is coming from INSIDE THE HOUSE. PICK IT UP. 

And because I refuse to give these idiots a break, I will now break down each of these messages individually to show you how stupid they are. 

“Glad you made the right choice.” (Sophie)

That’s just textbook manipulation. I’m not sure how it’s supposed to help Sophie think more critically or teach her how to solve problems. All this message is conveying is that Sophie, the “heir” to the Black Swan, the one whose “spot is reserved” has made the “right” “choice” accepting the rules that THEY have set FOR HER. Basically, the “right choice” here is to accept that she has no agency whatsoever and that the Black Swan’s manipulation has worked wonders because she is exactly where they want her to be. This is quite possibly the direct opposite of training her mind to think critically. Disgusting message, -1000/10. 

I don’t know HOW this girl puts up with these jerks. 

“To show you the world in new ways.” (Biana)

Where. 

When. 

How. 

Why. 

What. 

Name me one time the Black Swan has challenged Biana’s views ever. You know this could’ve been good foreshadowing if Coiffe had taught them how to use darkness vision before Prentice’s jail-break, or if Calla had been part of the Black Swan and taught Biana how to see other Vanishers. 

Or, if, I don’t know, Forkle had remotely challenged Della’s views about Exillium at all, instead of reinforcing them by calling Waywards the “Unworthy” even though only three people in this book do this (Della, ALINA, and Forkle). The only person who even tries to show Biana the world in new ways is Sophie. Sophie, not the Black Swan who is supposed to be the teacher in this book. Sophie, not the pendant that was gifted by the Black Swan. Lie/10. 

“For when you need to look closer.” (Della) 

Does the pendant contain a magnifying glass? Does Della have poor eyesight? Perhaps, perhaps not, but that’s not brought up so you know what it is. Scam/10. 

“Because seeing is believing.” (Dex)

This one is arguably one of the worst because that’s literally a religious quote lmfao. It’s from some clergyman who lived in the 17th century. Anyways. How this ended up in Dex’s pendant, I have no fucking clue. Did Shannon look up quotes that sounded wise or what—

What’s even dumber is that the Black Swan couldn’t even be asked to write the entire quote, as if they ran out of ink. The full quote is: “Seeing is believing, but feeling is the truth.” 

Still, this has no business being in Dex’s pendant and also is not going to make him think any more critically or teach him how to solve problems. Unless they want him to convert to Christianity after he saw David’s marble stick in Florence? I don’t even know man. Dex is too atheist for this shit/10. 

“The smallest things can be the most dangerous.” (Fitz)

Okay so Granite and Forkle were DEFINITELY on crack when they wrote this because who the hell thought it made perfect sense to give this quote to the TALLEST, BIGGEST GUY OF THE GROUP. What are they even on about? What is Fitz going to do with this information? My Kindle note says: “they were trying to warn him about Umber” but that’s just because of my personal headcanon that Umber is super short. 

The worst thing about this message is that it’s the ONLY ONE that actually becomes relevant later in the story, when Biana and Sophie encounter Ruy. Biana says this: 

"I just remembered what Fitz's note had said about the smallest things being the most dangerous and I thought... why not?" [Neverseen, Ch.20]

Okay, Shannon, riddle me this. Why would you give the message to Fitz if in the end it’s BIANA who’s going to use it? I genuinely don’t understand why Shannon couldn’t just write it so that Biana gets the wisdom that she will be the only one to apply later on??

Did Shannon think it was too big of a coincidence?

Did she think it would make the Black Swan look a little too big brained? THEY NEED THAT. They NEED a big brain moment to beat the dumbasses allegations!!! 

It’s driving me crazy that only ⅙ of the messages ended up being helpful (barely) in the end, and it wasn’t even allocated to the right character? Thank goodness Biana thought about her brother’s riddle rather than her own. I wonder what would’ve happened if she’d been thinking about “seeing the world in new ways” as she spoke to Ruy? Or worse: “glad you made the right choice.” 

Honestly at this point just make… none of them helpful. It took away from the impulsive move that Biana pulled in that scene, in a meagre attempt at making the Black Swan seem more useful than they really are (i.e., not at all). Not that Biana’s idea (or Chapter 19 as a whole) made sense either way but… yeah. Wrong person/10. 

“Do not lose your way.” (Keefe) 

This quote is so, so, so fucking stupid because at that point in time (Ch. 11-13) Forkle had no reason whatsoever to believe that Keefe could lose his way.

Because this note was written 1-2 business days before Keefe learned about his mother’s “death”. So unless Forkle knew about the news from Lur and Mitya beforehand (he did not, Sophie was the first elf to hear about it), then the warning makes no sense. At all. Timing??/10. 

So to go back to my programmed button-presses idea, I believe instead of personalised, stupid sounding proverbs and manipulative notes, the Black Swan could’ve taught everyone the same lesson: you must be ready to fail 99 times to succeed on the 100th.

And then Granite and Forkle would’ve come to them at breakfast all smug about their little test only for Dex, Biana and Fitz to reveal that they figured out the trick and found quicker ways around it—making the Black Swan part-frustrated, part-impressed. 

*puts my head in my hands* this book could’ve been so good if it was good—

6// Project Moon-who? 

So you know how, to this date (i.e. Unraveled being the latest book), we still have no clue about what Project Moonlark is even about? Well. I feel like if there was a book where we could’ve learned the most about the project that is supposed to be the literal spine of this series, it was going to be Neverseen. 

You know. The book where Sophie lives with two of her creators (Forkle and Calla) for about two months. The book where Sophie takes her “reserved spot” as the sole “heir” to the Black Swan. The book where Prentice is finally freed. 

Even Simon and Schuster (the publishing house), who created KotLC guides for educators, believe that Neverseen was meant to reveal more about the Black Swan and Project Moonlark, which I find laughable to no end: 

“Describe the purpose of Project Moonlark” Do you… want kids to fail??? 

Even Shannon couldn’t tell you what the purpose of the project is. Because Auntie is allergic to answers and might genuinely burst into flames if she tried to even remotely balance the ratio of set ups to pay offs in her books. 

Okay, perhaps I am being a little mean. Technically, Neverseen does provide some new details about Project Moonlark, which I will first look at before concerning myself with how they aren’t all that relevant or don’t make sense—and what should’ve been revealed instead and how. 

Revelation #1: Calla was part of Project Moonlark 

Obviously this wasn’t a big gasp or twist or anything readers had wanted to know—since we learn this in Chapter 13 (a.k.a Calla’s second scene ever). There was no build up, no mysteries, no “I wonder who could’ve participated in this project.” Sophie herself had assumed until then that Forkle was the sole brain behind it, though that’s partly on Sophie not knowing much about proper scientific research.

Still. Calla being part of Project Moonlark shouldn’t count as a big revelation at all—however it could’ve and should’ve been used as an opportunity to reveal more about the project… preferably with answers that Forkle would’ve rather delayed. But of course that would require Calla to not be an elf bootlicker for five fucking minutes and disagree with Forkle on fundamental issues. Which is not the case.

What do we learn from Calla about Project Moonlark? Nothing exciting, really. Mostly because Calla doesn’t seem to know the difference between a teenage girl and a bird:

Calla nodded. "I was the one who chose the project's name." [Neverseen, Ch.11]

“They leave their hatchlings alone because they know their young need to be strong. Moonlarks face more predators than most other creatures. So even though the parents follow their eggs across the ocean and are never far away from the babies, they do not make contact, and they do not bring them to the nest. Their instincts know that if they did, they would shelter the younglings and weaken their ability to survive.” [Neverseen, Ch.20]

As we can see, Calla seems mostly concerned with the metaphor behind the project’s name more so than the Black Swan’s actual “plans” for Sophie’s future. That’s why her participation in the project feels incredibly hollow and superficial: she doesn’t do anything, really, and denies “helping” and knowing about the Black Swan’s plans:

“So . . . you helped tweak my genes,” Sophie clarified, [...] “ ‘Helped’ is the wrong word. I was there to keep the Black Swan grounded, and ensure they never strayed from what was natural, or lost sight of the fact that they were sparking the life of an innocent girl.” [Neverseen, Ch.12]

... Almost as if Shannon was afraid to make Calla morally dubious (which, you know, wouldn’t be very good considering Calla was written to die) by either making her participate in the shady parts of the project or by having her actively lie/withdraw information from Sophie. 

Calla is supposed to be this pure, near ‘holy’ figure that makes sure the Black Swan remains “grounded” and ethical, despite Project Moonlark breaking ethics such as informed consent (from Sophie, who didn’t ask to be created, and from Emma and William Foster, who didn’t know their child wasn’t biologically theirs and would be stripped away from them along with their memories of her time with them). 

I have posted before about how Calla should’ve been morally grey at best, since yes, Project Moonlark does severely violate the laws of nature—such as the fact that no elf is supposed to be a Teleporter, and no elf is supposed to have brown eyes, and no elf is supposed to have an impenetrable mind, and no elf is supposed to have more than two abilities, and no elf is supposed to have their abilities triggered at 5 years old, etc...

The narrative later turns around and calls Gisela’s shenanigans unethical while upholding Project Moonlark as this logical and safe experiment—which is just the pot calling the kettle black. Sophie may have had a whole team creating her, but genetic experiments always, always carry unpredictable elements.

There is no such thing as zero risk. 

That’s why moonlarks don’t lay just one perfect egg, they lay multiple eggs at once, because only the strongest will survive (minute of silence to wishfully think about the moonlark twins…).  

In a deleted line, Calla reveals that she’s the one who recommended Oralie as Sophie’s biological mother—but we will ignore this information and thank the sky that it was deleted because something about it just irks me.

The deleted line is here if you're curious:

Another issue with Calla playing dumb (? I feel?) about how much she knows of the project means we were robbed from learning what truly drives her: 

“Does that mean you know what they’re planning for me?” Sophie asked. “ ‘Plan’ is also the wrong word. I know their hopes—mostly because I share them.” She turned away, humming under her breath and making more reveriebells blossom. [Neverseen, Ch.12]

Here she (conveniently) leaves out the part about sharing what their “hopes” (and thus, hers) are, which means we are left with no clear idea of what Calla wanted from Sophie.

This was her only chance to tell us her deeper motivations and she fumbled miserably because singing to flowers is more important than proper characterisation, apparently. 

And she’s dead now. So we will definitely never know. 

I swear, I better not be seeing any vague “Calla would be proud *crocodile tears*” moment from Flori in Elysian—or, hell, a godforsaken KotLC 11—because we have no idea if she truly would.

What did she want? What did Calla and the Black Swan hope? Why would she join a project centered around an elf and her super-special abilities and human upbringing? WHAT'S IN IT FOR THE GNOMES????? For the other species????

We. Will. Never. Know. 

The reality is, Calla being part of Project Moonlark adds no value to the mystery whatsoever nor does it get us readers (and Sophie) any-fucking-where. 

Either Shannon should’ve taken the leap of faith and made an unapologetic morally grey Calla (IMAGINE), or she should’ve made a morally grey Calla that has a micro-redemption arc in this book by revealing more to Sophie about her fate than the Black Swan would necessarily allow her at that point in time (DOUBLE IMAGINE WITH EXTRA EXCLAMATION POINTS). 

Too late for that, though. 

Revelation #2: Forkle is *not* the father 

[Insert shocked Pikachu face.] Feels like there’s an “allegedly” missing here. Forkle is allegedly not the father. Because I actually don’t trust anything this man has ever said or done. Especially not on a secret as BIG as this one: 

“Then why would you list yourself as family?” Fitz asked. “Because I am family. My name is the one on her Inception Certificate. Someone had to vouch for her existence. [...]" [Neverseen, Ch.40]

“Someday you may understand,” Mr. Forkle told Sophie. “But for now I can at least assure you—as I did with your concerns about Jolie—that I am not your genetic father.” Keefe grabbed Mr. Forkle’s wrist. “He’s telling the truth. And . . . he actually feels kinda bad about it.” “Of course I do! Project Moonlark may have been unconventional. But I am your family. And you are mine.” [Neverseen, Ch.40]

[Okay so this rant is absolutely not here to push my Forkle Is The Father Theory on y’all or anything… but I did highlight in pink how Forkle could be playing with words here, lying by omission thanks to the (then unknown) fact that he has a secret twin. And by the way? The italics are in the canon text, not my additions. I find them incredibly suspicious, as if Shannon is hinting that Forkle is playing severely with words. Which would explain why he feels “kinda bad about it.” Okay now I can shut the fuck up about my theories.] 

So for now we are supposed to believe that Forkle is *not* the father, or, at the very least, that the Forkle speaking to Sophie in that scene is not her father. Sure. I’ll take it.

And just so you know. I do not blame Neverseen for not revealing Sophie’s biological parents—it would be a ridiculous complaint to have. It's just too soon. Way too soon.

Revelation #3: Neverseen is a scam

Because that’s it. There’s no more new information that Sophie learns in this book about herself or Project Moonlark, in spite of—as previously said—Sophie sharing a roof with two of her creators (actually three, if you count Forkle as two individuals. Which I do not). I guess you could add in the Inception Date as a reveal, but I don't think it directly relates to Project Moonlark.

Also there was this line:

“You’re a monster,” Sophie growled. “Said the living lab experiment. Tell me, did he spark your life and then freeze you and keep tweaking?” “Of course not!” Mr. Forkle turned to Sophie. “Any tweaks I made to your DNA were done before your inception. I implanted your embryo immediately.” [Neverseen, Ch.22]

... but since Sophie wouldn't have been bothered whether her embryo was frozen or not, I do not consider this to be a "revelation".

There’s a throwaway line in Ch.39 about Sophie having yet another ability to trigger (i.e. Enhancing) but that’s not in this book. And I hate Enhancing with a burning passion. So it doesn’t count. 

My point is. We don’t learn sufficiently enough about Project Moonlark in this book despite being the most Black Swan- and Forkle-centric (472 mentions…) book in the entire series—much, much to my chagrin. 

This is worsened by the fact that Project Moonlark is the only known active project the Black Swan has going on, which unfortunately means that we readers are left with the sour impression that the Black Swan doesn’t do fuck all most of the time aside from handwaving Sophie towards their vague goals.

Which is more than a mere impression, really. It’s the truth. The Prentice rescue mission is technically damage-control for Project Moonlark, so it doesn’t even count. 

7// Come On, Do Something

The Black Swan basically shot themselves in the foot as a credible organisation the second they decided that they would let the Council—you know, the people who were so comically incapable that the Black Swan had to be formed in the first place—handle the plague. 

As I’ve said in the Plague Rant, the Council shouldn’t have worried about the plague until the Lost Cities gnomes went on a strike. Because the gnomes from the colonies are in-de-pen-dent, meaning their freedom came at the price of not having the elves and goblins’ protection from the ogres. 

The Council would also not want to risk upsetting the ogres further, since the treaties state the following: 

“[...] But the ogre treaty is like, ‘We promise we won’t use our abilities on you, or visit your cities, or ask too many questions about anything you’re doing, and you’re allowed to continue building weapons as long as you promise not to use them, and you can do all kinds of other dangerous things too and we won’t stop you, and if we do, you have the right to declare war.’ [...]” [Neverseen, Ch.24]

But this would’ve required Neverseen to stand on business and follow Everblaze’s lead which portrayed the Councillors as a differently-but-just-as-evil group of people than the Neverseens. 

If Neverseen was truly punk instead of merely posing for punk posters, then the Neverseens and Councillors would’ve been Charybdis and Scylla—both awful but one is just ever so slightly less evil than the other. I said what I said. 

My point is, if the Black Swan wanted something to do in this book aside from Project Moonlark, all they had to do was work on developing their own cure, which would’ve allowed them to get on top of everyone else and prevent blackmail as seen with Dimitar’s ultimatum in Ch.62. 

But nope. Instead, we have Forkman glazing the people he (allegedly) disapproves of: 

"[...] The Council has been extremely guarded with their information, and at the moment they’re allowing no visitors. But I do know that all of our best physicians are working to isolate the pathogen. I’m sure they’ll find the cure soon.” [Neverseen, Ch.7]

“[...] I’ll have to rally my sources and see if Oralie has evidence for her suspicions. In the meantime, please put this out of your mind. You know better than most, Miss Foster, how truly powerful our medicine can be. I have no doubt the gnomes will recover soon. Shall we?” [Neverseen, Ch.7]

Translation: "I put all my faith in Big Daddy Council being exceptionally competent for once because I don’t want to distract myself with the low-lives that are the gnomes."

Now imagine if the Council had categorically refused to suspect the ogres, or they'd decided to remain entirely neutral (until strikes from Lost Cities gnomes arise, that is), forcing the Black Swan to deploy more resourcefulness than ever and recruit people who would be the most qualified to find the cure. Completely random suggestion here but… 

Why not Cadence? 

There she was in Everblaze, making a name for herself by standing up for Sophie in front of Dimitar, challenging him in front of the entire population, and making the Council look so bad in comparison that people were ready to elect her as Kenric’s successor despite barely knowing her.

If there was any book to recruit Cadence into the Black Swan, it was Neverseen. Arguably Lodestar. To me, recruiting her in Nightfall is criminally late—especially since she’s the one making the offer. 

Because surely, the Black Swan must’ve taken notice of her growing disapproval of the ogres. Surely, they should’ve been able to tell that Cadence, the diplomat, the decades-long researcher into ogre microbiology, would be the most qualified to study an ogre-manufactured plague and perhaps develop its cure. 

Except apparently the Black Swan is dumb and blind and probably doesn’t care about the gnomes all that much to invest even the smallest amount of their limited brain cells into saving them. 

I can't believe Cadence just... gave them her markchain at the end of Neverseen? Just like that? What did they tell her to convince her? Why is the moment they convinced Lady Cadence Talle to betray both the Council and King Dimitar OFF-PAGE? Why was Sophie not there when it happened? And why didn't the Black Swan not instantly recruit her afterwards?

Sophie removed the silver pendant hanging from her neck and handed it to Alv*r. She was still stunned Lady Cadence had agreed to loan it to them. [Neverseen, Ch.66]

And even if the Black Swan hadn’t worked on finding the cure and let Alpha Council handle it, there was so much damage control that they could’ve done instead.

They could’ve relocated the evacuees themselves, they could’ve helped regrouping families, they could’ve offered food and shelter and moral support to the diseased. They could’ve acted as placeholders for the Council. 

They could’ve taught Sophie and friends that rebellion is not always violent. 

That, sometimes, rebellion is stepping up when no one else wants to. 

*Mic Drop* 

Conclusion

And on this gorgeous note we are going to end here because I really am running out of fucks to give and will to live. For context, I started writing this rant in March. Yeah 🤡

There was so much more to rant about, from Jolie’s odd erasure in Neverseen despite her rising importance in Everblaze and her haphazard parallel with Keefe in Lodestar, to Prentice’s rescue mission having no business being that stupid, to the callous mistreatment of Gethen that makes the Black Swan no better than the Council and Neverseens.